After two decades of planning and over six years of construction and renovation, the historic Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now officially stands on its new seismic safety net—a base isolation system consisting of 98 base isolators.
“The system is unlike anywhere else in the world,” Nathan Espinoza, assistant project manager with Jacobsen Construction, said in a Tuesday church press release announcing the milestone.
Ninety-eight base isolators were installed in July 2025 between the temple’s upper and lower foundations. They are mechanical devices engineered to carry more than 8 million pounds each, to isolate the temple above from the earth’s movement during a seismic event, and to give the grounds space to move 5 feet in any horizontal direction during an earthquake.
Starting Thursday, crews began removing the more than 1,500 bolts connecting 392 plates to the temple’s base isolators. These plates kept the temple’s base isolators, located about 20 feet below the temple, stabilized during installation and weight transfer, according to the church’s press release.
Visit the Deseret News to read more about the latest updates to the Salt Lake Temple restoration project.
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