Agouridis is executive director of Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. In July, she helped organize a simulated Sarin gas attack with several downtown businesses to see how the District is doing at preparing for the worst. She’ll organize another such “table top” drill in September.
Do you think downtown is prepared for some kind of disaster?
I think that nobody is ever fully prepared. But I think we’ve come a long way since Sept. 11 in learning and anticipating how to respond. … We’re able to go up to building owners and go, “Hey, let’s all get together and work on this.”
Do you think overall, there’s a good understanding of roles?
I think people are getting more and more savvy about that. I think people are understanding more and more the importance of that. Things like sheltering in place. On Sept. 11, there were cars everywhere. People were walking everywhere. I worked for Metro at the time. Fortunately, my boss made the decision to keep the system running.
Running the simulation, what was the biggest surprise?
It depends on where you were. If you were a person who was planning the simulation, I think the biggest surprise was that so many people exercised shelter-in-place. The general consensus among responders is that people — while they should shelter in place — their instinct is to flee. I think if you were a participant, like a business in the area … the biggest piece of learning is that the government isn’t going to tell you what to do in the first 15 minutes, half an hour, 45 minutes. It takes a while for responders to get on the scene, assess and then communicate what seems to be happening. Those first couple of minutes really inform the whole event. That’s really in some cases where the best decisions are made. – Bill Myers
