INSIDE
The University Daily KANSAN
October 18, 1983 Page 6
Wallace Rogers, a steam fitter who has worked in the tunnels for 17 years, pauses to reminisce about his varied experiences searching the tunnels for maintenance problems.
A view down one of the small, old tunnels shows that they are not clean, well-lighted places. Some of the oldest tunnels were built in the 1880s.
Story by Bruce F. Honomichl Pictures by Stephen Phillips
Workers roam underground to fix steam leaks in tunnels
Wallace Rogers wears the scars of his job proudly.
Rogers, a steam fitter for facilities operations, has roamed the five miles of underground steam tunnels at the University of Kansas for 17 years.
"Pretty hot work, it is," he says. "Some say it's dangerous, and it's about 125 degrees or so down there all the time. But as long as you watch your step, you won't get yourself burnt too bad ever."
Rogers and the eight other men in the shop roam the tunnels, repairing pipes and insulation, to keep the University heated and cooled properly. And although the work is sometimes dangerous, they say, roaming the tunnels gives them pride and a status that other workers on campus can't claim.
Their office is the University's bowels.
Then brince is the University of Rogers points to an oval, pale spot on his bicep. "I got burnt here once where the steam pressure in the pipes was 125 pounds and it leaked and the steam cut me," he says. "But that's the only time it happened real bad."
Once every two weeks, four steam shop workers "run the tunnels," looking for cracked pipe, worn insulation and vandalism.
"Those tunnels are dark and dirty, and that's a fact of life," he said calmly, wheeling a facilities operations pickup truck along Memorial Drive one cool, bright morning last week.
"You always get burnt working in the tunnels. It's pretty hot work," he said, remembering others who have roamed the tunnels in the past. "But only two guys really got burnt bad working down here since I've been here.
since 1975. One man, Rogers said, "got a line full of water. Probably from a hole only the size of a pin. Blew out of the pipe and burnt him bad on the chest and stomach. Left a doggone mark on the concrete wall."
Other men in the shop tell many of the same stories about working in the gloomy tunnels.
Jim George, a steam fitter since 1979, lost his way on his first day inside the tunnels. Many of the narrow tunnels are lighted only by naked bulbs, and often two people must travel through them in single file.
"It's a world all by itself down there," George said. "I didn't know where I was. It's a whole maze of pipes down there, and you've got to learn them gradually. They told me when I was hired that 40 percent of the tunnels pack 100 percent of the heat and the humidity.
"Not much glamour, unless you like sweat. It's hot, dirty and miserable a lot of the time." While four men check through the tunnels every couple of weeks, the remaining five take care of other duties. The men running the tunnels follow a buddy system in case one of them is injured.
The tunnel Rogers climbed into was too narrow for two people to walk side by side, and got hotter as he walked deeper into it. Rogers pointed down the passageway, seemingly into the darkness to nowhere.
"More dangerous than if you get burnt is if you sweat a lot," he said. "The sweat'll blister you bad, real bad."
"A hard hat and a flashlight and leather gloves go with you, always," said Rogers, prying open a manhole leading down stone steps to a tunnel near the Kansas Union.
Older stone and brick tunnels that run underneath buildings such as Hoch and
Strong halls date back to the 1880s or 1890s. The newer walls are concrete and some of the pipes are steel, said Chuck Chilson, the shop supervisor.
shop supervise.
“On the old part of the hill, it’s real, real grungy in a lot of places. At times when the lights are out or something goes wrong, it gets a little hairy,” he said in his office, a cubbyhole overrun with tools and charts in a corner of the shop behind Stauffer-Flint Hall.
"But these men are the best," he said.
"They've worked together for a long time. If there is talent in sweating a lot and doing this kind of work, they have it."
Five of the men who roam the tunnels are steam fitters, two are welders, one is a maintenance mechanic and one a shop supervisor. Many worked at other jobs before coming to the steam shop.
Chilson said, "Construction in Kansas was only seasonal work. But this is interesting work, in its own way. You can actually see some of the history of the school down there, in a sense."
Rogers was a pinsetter at Hillcrest Bowling Lanes for 10 years and was a mechanic before that. George was also a mechanical. Chilson was a construction worker.
Bob Carter, a welder, has roamed the tunnels for 20 years longer than anyone else in the shop. He installs and repairs steam lines.
"It's hard to say what the biggest problem is - leaks, probably. The worst time for this work is in the winter. You get into those steam tunnels and you go out into the cold and you (run the risk of getting) pneumonia most of the time," Carter said.
"If a man knew where to go, if he knows the tunnel, he could evade the average cop." Chilson said. "But the solution is to turn off the lights, probably. It gets a little scary if the lights are off because the tunnels are wet and damp and hot. It's so hot that a rat couldn't survive."
Chilson recounted the problems the tunnel runners encounter during repairs.
Rogers said that vandals never caused much damage inside the tunnels but that facilities operations often had to replace locks on the doors of the tunnels.
"When a pipe breaks off, it makes one helluva sound. Shrill. You listen for trouble in the traps. You can just hear the discharge if something's wrong. The condensation building up causes hammering inside the pipes."
p Two men usually take all day to run half of the campus tunnels, Rogers said.
"It's just because there's so much of the tunnels," he said as he unlocked the door of another tunnel. "And some, like this one, start chest-high and get shorter all the time. By the time you finish with that one, you're down on your knees.
"I wish all of them were like that, though They're newer and they aren't that hot."
Rogers and the other men call tunnel-running to be simply an everyday job that requires an eye for the unusual. The job must be done, he says, and the shop men like to think of themselves as the best at what they do.
Rogers defined his job with resignation but had to smile. "It's good work. But when it's wet, it's hot. And it's always wet."
Jim George, shown here and on p. 1, tightens the packing on one of the many valves tunnels
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