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Texas: Local Resources

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TDEM: the state agency, and a large open training catalog

The Texas Division of Emergency Management coordinates state and local emergency response and runs public preparedness outreach under the banner “Prepare Today For A Safer Tomorrow.” Its most useful feature for an individual household is scale: TDEM’s training arm maintains a catalog of more than 1,000 courses, most free, covering everything from basic disaster preparedness to specialized response skills, open to the public as well as emergency responders.

Where TDEM's training actually lives

Course registration runs through PreparingTexas.org rather than TDEM’s main site. Not everything in the catalog is aimed at ordinary households, much of it targets responders and local officials, but the all-hazards preparedness sections are open to anyone and free to attend.

Where to find it: preparingtexas.org for training and course registration; tdem.texas.gov for general preparedness guidance and current alerts.

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension: the state’s version of USU/OSU/UC ANR Extension

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension runs the same category of program Utah’s USU Extension, Oregon’s OSU Extension, and California’s UC ANR do, delivered through county-level offices across all 254 Texas counties.

  • Texas Master Gardener Program: administered county by county, with initial training ranging from roughly 35 to 72+ hours depending on the county, covering soils, water conservation, pest management, vegetable and fruit production, and related topics, followed by a volunteer service commitment to earn certification.

Where to find it: agrilifeextension.tamu.edu lists every county office; the specific hours, cost, and schedule for Master Gardener training vary by county, the same pattern as every other state’s Extension program covered on this site.

CERT: real, but genuinely decentralized

Unlike Los Angeles’s single large citywide program, Texas doesn’t run CERT through one dominant statewide or metro-wide system. Instead, dozens of individual cities and counties, Fort Worth, Burleson, and Houston among them, run their own independent CERT chapters, each following the same FEMA-approved curriculum but with its own schedule, cost (usually free), and application process.

What this means in practice

There’s no single statewide CERT hub to check first. The most reliable path is searching “[your city or county] CERT” directly, or contacting TDEM’s training office at training@tdem.texas.gov or 512-377-0011 if a direct local search doesn’t turn up a program near you.

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