Currently at the Memorial & Museum

Mechanical Failure Causes Museum to Close - Day Four

January 19, 2009

Today we are beginning to see – and better understand – some long-term effects of water damage to the Museum. However, the situation could have been so much worse and we feel very blessed by the immediate response of employees, vendors, original installers, construction professionals and our Board. Today I am pleased to report some good news; not one artifact will be lost. Immediately after discovering water flooding into the Museum, the call went out to activate our Critical Incident Management Plan. This is a plan we have reviewed, rewritten, reworked and discussed more times than we care to remember, but this time it was for real. Bottom-line: the plan worked. All our training and preparation for disaster is already beginning to pay off.

Within minutes of the water breach, we turned-off all audiovisual components of the Museum, and as instructed by experts, we did not reactivate the machines for 48 hours. That period has now passed, and today, we are testing the audiovisual equipment in the Museum. That means 28 kiosk computers, 55 Televisions and monitors, 26 DVD players, three digital media players, seven Crestron processors, one Crestron computer, and four projectors which all work together to ensure that our state-of-the-art audiovisual systems operate at maximum performance and efficiency had to be tested. I am also pleased to report that much of the equipment did restart. Now that initial re-ignition has happened, Ford Audio, our systems AV Engineer, will help us analyze the entire system – and its individual components – to help determine just what was lost. Of course, we’re optimistic following the successful start-up of so much equipment this morning, but there will have to be some replacement. We will work to coordinate replacement and reinstallation as quickly as possible.

Lippert Bros. Construction, our general contractor, is already on-site today, assessing infrastructural issues such as walls, ceilings, carpets, paint, fire-proofing and other issues which may have been affected by the water damage.

OESCO representatives have also been in the Museum this morning, helping us to test the AV equipment and making repairs to light fixtures and conduit soaked by water following the Museum’s mechanical malfunction Friday morning.

ECI, our exhibit fabricators from Ohio, were here today and indicated they were pleased to see how well the exhibits handled the water. Some work will be required; however, damage was not as significant as they feared following initial reports.

Cardinal Engineering is back on-site testing and assessing the environmental components of the Museum (including moisture and humidity). They have been excellent to work with, and were kind enough today to leave tools with us to allow our curatorial staff to continue testing boxes for moisture content.

Blackmon Mooring teams are on-site again today, working to achieve final water removal getting the facility in the dry. The duct work is dry – which may be the best news of the day. Workers tell us they hope to be able to remove their dehumidifiers and fans by Wednesday or Thursday, which will allow Lippert to mobilize to repair damaged areas within the Museum.

Network Alarms and SIMPLEX will be here later today and tomorrow testing the security and fire systems and performing sprinkler head repairs.

Harrison-Orr and ABS are here working on the HVAC units and will be here for most of the week. We have some work to do on the HVAC units and that will take some time, but won’t slow down our re-opening.

David Dutton with North American Insurance Company stopped by today and reviewed our progress and offered some sage advice.

We have a video in the Museum lobby that tells the story to our visitors and has helped us with visitor services. The store has remained open and visitors have appreciated the opportunity to take a memento from the Museum with them.

To be realistic, we are probably a week away from reopening the Museum. Each day will bring more answers and time and weather are both on our sides. We have brought the same companies and people back that built this place and they all understand our mission and the importance of getting our doors open.

We have always taken our job as the guardians of this story and these special artifacts very seriously, but as we were running through the Museum activating our plan on Friday morning, I felt it more than ever. We communicated immediately with our constituent groups and want to keep you updated. We are very blessed that the Gallery of Honor had not one drop of water and again no artifacts are damaged. And even though water did saturate parts of the archives, employees moved boxes so quickly, that no contents were lost. Carpet, paint, video monitors are all replaceable, and we saved what really mattered…that was part of our plan and as I said earlier, it worked.

You can track our progress daily at www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org.

If you have any questions, or concerns, you can reach me at 235-3313.

Kari Watkins, Executive Director
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

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