02-04-2025
Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum unveils new exhibit
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Visitors to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum often share a similar question: Are we safer today?
That question is the title of a new exhibit unveiled Tuesday morning.
The 1995 bombing altered how the United States approached keeping the country safe.
'It was shocking,' said Calvin Byrd, who's now retired from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 'One of the questions that came out of it, what are the standards of minimum security standards for federal buildings? And at that time, there were no minimum security standards for federal buildings.'
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The 'Are We Safer Today?' exhibit uses artificial intelligence and video game technology. Visitors can ask experts in explosives, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity and large event security questions and hear their perspectives.
'It is a completely different world than what happened here in 1995,' said Kari Watkins, the President and CEO of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. 'We wanted to figure out how to tell that to generation kids who didn't know you used to walk straight to the airport gate, or you didn't have to go through magnetometers to get into every building and every school and every game.'
The exhibit took about four months to develop in collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
'The other thing we were trying to capture was just the scope and scale of the work that's being done to protect the communities,' said Daryle Hernandez, Chief Interagency Security Committee CISA. 'I think the answer is yes, we are safer today, but there's more work to be done.'
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