Community preparedness — Texas
From AgriLife Extension offices in the Panhandle to CERT teams on the Gulf Coast, from ham radio operators in El Paso to SKYWARN spotters in the Piney Woods, Texas has the largest community preparedness network in the country. Here's how to find yours.
Enter your ZIP to find volunteer groups, training programs, civic organizations, and mutual aid networks in your area.
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Community calendar
CERT trainings, canning workshops, ham radio exams, garden workdays, first aid classes. Events from local organizations that build community resilience.
250
County extension offices
10
NWS forecast offices
100+
Amateur radio clubs
3
Red Cross regions
Where to plug in
Texas is too big for a one-size-fits-all approach to anything. The people teaching water-wise gardening in Webb County understand Webb County. The CERT volunteers in Harris County trained for Harris County's flood risks. Start with the county you're standing in.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension operates 250 county offices staffed by over 900 professional educators, making it the largest cooperative extension system in the country. Programs run the full range: vegetable gardening and food preservation in East Texas, drought-resistant landscaping in the Trans-Pecos, livestock management across the Hill Country, 4-H youth programs in every region, and disaster preparedness workshops statewide. If you're not sure where to start building practical skills, start here.
The Texas Master Gardener program trains volunteers through county-level cohorts who then teach the public. The Texas Master Naturalist program does the same for conservation and land stewardship. Urban counties like Harris, Travis, Bexar, and Dallas run specialized programming for city residents, including community garden coordination, nutrition education, and financial literacy. Prairie View A&M also operates cooperative extension programs across the state.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) coordinates the state's all-hazards emergency program through eight regional offices and 21 disaster districts. TDEM is part of the Texas A&M University System and maintains the Preparing Texas training portal where residents can register for free CERT courses, ICS training, and disaster preparedness certification programs.
CERT programs run at the city and county level across Texas. Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Hays County, and El Paso all operate active CERT programs with regular training cohorts. After Winter Storm Uri in 2021, CERT enrollment surged across the state as Texans saw firsthand what trained community volunteers could do when systems failed. Training is free and typically runs 8 sessions over several weeks.
Three Red Cross regions serve Texas. The North Texas Region covers 121 counties from the DFW Metroplex to the Panhandle through five local chapters: DFW Metro East, DFW Metro West, Texas Panhandle Plains, East Texas, and Texas Big Country. The Central and South Texas Region is headquartered in Austin and serves through chapters in Central Texas, the Hill Country, Greater San Antonio, Heart of Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley. The Texas Gulf Coast Region covers the Houston metro and southeastern coast.
All three regions offer first aid, CPR, AED, lifeguarding, and water safety classes year-round. During Winter Storm Uri, the North Texas region alone pre-positioned 500 cots and 1,000 blankets before the storm hit, then coordinated delivery of over 140,000 meals and 12,000 supply kits alongside 300 trained staff and community partners. Volunteering with the Red Cross typically starts through shelter operations, disaster assessment, or blood drives.
Texas has over 100 amateur radio clubs organized across three ARRL sections: North Texas, South Texas, and West Texas, all within the West Gulf Division. The ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) network in Texas has been activated for hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and wildfires. During the July 2025 Hill Country floods, ARES operators in Kerr and Kendall counties provided communications for search-and-rescue teams when phone lines were overwhelmed, passing dozens of health and welfare messages for stranded families.
Getting licensed costs $15 for the exam and $35 for a basic handheld radio. Study at hamstudy.org, then find a local exam session. Clubs in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Lubbock, Midland, and Amarillo host exams monthly. The West Texas Section runs weekly Zoom meetings for members across its vast territory. The annual St. Patrick's Day Hamfest and ARRL West Texas Section Convention in Midland draws operators from across the region.
Ten NWS forecast offices serve Texas, more than any other state: Amarillo (Panhandle), Lubbock (South Plains), Midland/Odessa (Permian Basin), El Paso (far west), San Angelo (Concho Valley), Dallas/Fort Worth (North Texas), Austin/San Antonio (Central Texas), Houston/Galveston (Gulf Coast), Corpus Christi (Coastal Bend), and Brownsville (Rio Grande Valley). Each office runs SKYWARN spotter training, typically in spring before severe weather season.
Trained spotters provide the ground-truth observations the NWS uses to issue tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, and flash flood alerts. In a state that averages more tornadoes per year than any other, spotter reports are the difference between a warning that arrives in time and one that doesn't. Training is free, runs about 2 hours, and is offered both in-person and online through your local forecast office.
Texas has over 560 public libraries connected through the TexShare consortium administered by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. County and city libraries across the state host seed libraries, gardening workshops, financial literacy classes, and emergency preparedness events. The Houston Public Library, Austin Public Library, and San Antonio Public Library systems are among the largest in the country, each running extensive community programming.
The Texas community college system includes 50 districts serving every region of the state. Colleges like Tarrant County College, Lone Star College (Houston area), Austin Community College, and Alamo Colleges (San Antonio) offer affordable continuing education in first aid, EMT certification, welding, small engine repair, electrical work, and other practical trades. If you want to build real skills without a four-year commitment, the community college system is built for exactly that.
Why this matters
In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri pushed temperatures below zero across a state that had never planned for sustained arctic cold. The power grid collapsed. Over 9 million Texans lost electricity, many for days. Pipes froze and burst. Water systems failed. Roads were impassable. In Harris County alone, damages reached into the billions.
The people who filled the gap were the ones who had already organized. The North Texas Red Cross had pre-positioned 500 cots and 1,000 blankets before the storm hit, then coordinated over 140,000 meals alongside 300 trained staff and community partners. Churches and community centers that had rehearsed emergency shelter operations opened warming stations within hours. In Austin, neighbors with generators ran extension cords to elderly residents next door. Volunteer fire departments and CERT-trained residents conducted welfare checks block by block in communities where official responders couldn't reach.
Ham radio operators activated emergency nets across the state when cell towers went down under ice loads. Extension agents coordinated food and water distribution through their existing county networks. Thousands of individual volunteers showed up at food banks and distribution points. The difference between a community that weathered the storm and one that suffered alone often came down to whether someone on the block had trained, organized, or simply knew who to call.
Every one of those responses started before the storm. The training was free. The organizations are still here. The next event is a matter of when, not if.
The foundation
Community resilience begins with a household that can take care of itself. Cover the first 72 hours, then extend outward to your street, your neighborhood, your town.
Start with the first 72 hours