{"id":91799,"date":"2025-03-18T14:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T14:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/americas-underground-lab-overhauls-its-wwii-era-wooden-mine-shaft\/"},"modified":"2025-03-18T14:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T14:26:07","slug":"americas-underground-lab-overhauls-its-wwii-era-wooden-mine-shaft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/americas-underground-lab-overhauls-its-wwii-era-wooden-mine-shaft\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Underground Lab overhauls its WWII era wooden mine shaft"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Lead, SD, March 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in the Black Hills of South Dakota is America\u2019s Underground Lab \u2013 with cutting-edge experiments in biology, geothermal energy, engineering, and physics. <\/p>\n

Experiments at SURF include the world\u2019s leading dark matter detector, LUX ZEPLIN, and the on-going construction of the massive Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). <\/p>\n

The facility\u2019s high-tech science experiments are kept inside a massive historic structure of 370 miles of tunnels and shafts that was once North America\u2019s deepest gold mine. The Yates Shaft is one of two mineshafts used to access the underground laboratory space. The Yates is a World War II era shaft that reaches nearly a mile to the main laboratory site 4850 feet below the surface.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The Yates Shaft is lined all the way down with a complex lacing of timber framed wood beams. Over the last three years, an intrepid crew of technicians replaced the large timbers and added or replaced rock bolts and steel mesh along the shaft walls from the top to the bottom of the shaft. <\/p>\n

The crews essentially built a wooden timber framed structure a mile deep\u2014with all the added complications of working underground inside a mine shaft. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think there’s any word that could describe the pride in the four crews that we have working on this project,\u201d said Wendy Straub, Chief Operating Officer at SURF. \u201cThis is something that doesn’t come with a set of instructions. It was really engineering on the fly.\u00a0 I think today they are stronger and better for everything that they’ve achieved. Blood, sweat and tears, we’ve seen it all, and it’s been worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Straub gives extra praise to four crews, a total of 16 technicians, alongside two logistics coordinators, three superintendents, and eight hoist operators, who completed the work to the highest standards while prioritizing safety. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest part was definitely at the beginning; we had to figure out how to approach this whole thing,\u201d said Will Hover, infrastructure technician at SURF. \u201cThere aren’t a lot of people even left alive that have worked timber inside a mine shaft like this. We had to learn for ourselves how to rebuild it from the top down.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

One of the big challenges crews encountered were areas of instability of the rock wall behind the timber framed shaft. In some locations, large boulders broke off the shaft wall and pressed against the timbers.\u00a0 \u201cWe would go in and use the jackleg, which is like a jackhammer, or handheld hammers and break down those boulders to manageable sizes.\u00a0 Then we would use winches and pulls to move those boulders into the skip conveyance and get them moved out of the way,\u201d said Russ Bauer who leads one of the four-person shaft crews that worked both day and night shifts on the maintenance project for the past two years. \u201cThe boulders were among the bigger challenges we encountered, and it\u2019s definitely great to have three other heads on the crew to help figure out obstacles like this,\u201d Bauer said.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The long-list of daily protective equipment Bauer and his crew wear each day includes safety harnesses, carabiners, and slings that keep them from falling 5,000 feet to the 300-foot pool of water at the bottom of the pitch-dark shaft. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re extremely safety focused, always looking out for each other,\u201d Hover said. \u201cIt’s a pretty hazardous area down there, and we’re constantly working to identify and mitigate danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safety is first among SURF\u2019s cores values, and the facility maintains an excellent overall safety record<\/a>. The safety of those who use the shaft for the daily commute underground is one of the reasons this top-down maintenance was completed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a stop work issued in July of 2021. I was fortunate enough to have people above me, including the management team at SURF, to back the decision to go in and do full, heavy top-down maintenance to make sure that the shaft is safe to operate going forward,\u201d Straub said. <\/p>\n

The Yates Shaft was first constructed during the lead-up to WW II, when the country\u2019s need for steel necessitated the use of timbers to support the walls of the structure, rather than steel. After more than 70 years of use in both the former gold mine and the more recent underground laboratory, the timbers needed replacement. Shaft workers marvel at the work of the miners who completed the timber lined shaft by hand so many years ago. Bauer and Hover are among many current employees at SURF who have deep family connections at the facility. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandpa was a hoist operator. My dad was a hoist operator who just retired, and I got a couple uncles that are still hoist operators up here. I’m incredibly proud of my family history on this site,\u201d Bauer said. \u201cMy grandfather was a miner, my dad was a motorman for the mine, and then he was the head of the emergency response team here at SURF until he retired a couple years ago. Getting to see and experience this whole facility, where two generations of my family have dug into the Black Hills, is awesome,\u201d Hover added. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe incredible work of this team, who spent the past three and a half years refurbishing the timber in this shaft, is a testament to their own perseverance and grit, and an extension of the long history and deep skillsets that made America\u2019s Underground Lab possible. I\u2019m so proud of our Yates team in reaching this milestone with strong safety performance,\u201d said Mike Headley, executive director of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority and laboratory director at SURF. <\/p>\n

Headley points out that SURF is home to experiments with lifespans that could carry research here well into the 21st<\/sup> century, so it\u2019s possible, Hover, Bauer, and others at SURF could see their own children take up this work where they leave off\u2014continuing this legacy\u2014with a new purpose. <\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in the mining community and been around mining all my life. So, when someone asks what I do inside this shaft all day, I pretty much just tell them, we’re mining for science,\u2019\u201d Hover said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The expertise these crews have built in refurbishing this shaft for science will remain valuable in coming years. SURF is planning to reline the Yates Shaft with steel, in a similar overhaul completed on the Ross Shaft in the ramp up to the DUNE project<\/a>. Regardless of the composition of the shafts, the maintenance required to keep them safe and operational will keep crews of workers gainfully employed at SURF for decades to come.\u00a0 <\/p>\n