Texas State Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)   District 04 Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW)

What is the Texas State Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)...?

The State of Texas is quite often susceptible to the effects of natural disasters - as well as from the results of man-made catastrophes.  The most common natural occurrences include hurricanes, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flash flood, wildfires, and heat waves - which can often bring about power outages.  Man-made occurrences could involve transportation accidents, factory explosions, fires, hazardous materials spills and nuclear accidents, criminal actions, terrorist acts, and other mass fatality events.

Sometimes as a result of the nature or size of these emergency events - State, County, and Local governments may at times find that their resources are inadequate to effectively respond to such difficult incidents.

This can be especially true in the area of Communications when normal day-to-day systems are used in support of widespread emergencies or disasters.  Because of system outages or overcrowding by sudden emergency traffic - normal communication systems may become unusable or inadequate to meet the emergency or disaster response needs.

In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized emergency management organizations to officially organize and employ radio amateurs to supplement government communications systems during emergencies or disaster operations.  The FCC advocates the principle that a fundamental basis and purpose of the 'Amateur Radio Service' is to provide voluntary non-commercial emergency communications to the public, and licensed amateur radio operators are often called upon to assist in communications during an emergency.

The Amateur Radio Regulations, Part 97, Subpart E, §97.407, were created by the FCC to describe the 'Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)' operations in detail.

The State of Texas, through the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) endorses the RACES program as an Official Resource of the State in support of emergency or disaster operations. The Chief of Division of Emergency Management has appointed a 'State RACES Radio Officer (SRO)' responsible for organizing and directing the State RACES program and for providing guidance to local governments to establish and operate local RACES programs.

The following video was released in 2014 by District Radio Officer Jerry Buxton, N0JY - and provides an excellent understanding of role and operations of Texas State RACES.

Note:  Some of this organizational material is now outdated and may not be accurate.

To start the video - click on the Play Button on the lower left corner

The Texas Division of Emergency Management has organized the State into 8 Geographical Regions

District 04 Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) is located in North Texas within Region 2

District 04 Dallas-Forth Worth (DFW) is Comprised of Sixteen (16) Geographical Counties:

Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Erath, Hood, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Navarro, Palo Pinto, Parker, Rockwall, Somervell, Tarrant and Wise

Website Last Updated - August 15, 2024