Round Rock Express Host Preparedness Night, Dole Out $1 Hot Dogs at Dell Diamond

Central Texas emergency officials are turning a Triple-A baseball game into a public safety pitch. On September 2, Dell Diamond in Round Rock will host Get Ready Central Texas Emergency Preparedness Night, timed to the Round Rock Express hosting the Oklahoma City Comets — with a $1 Hot Dog Night promotion running alongside the preparedness push. Gates open at 6:00 p.m., with first pitch set for 6:45 p.m. at the ballpark located at 3400 E Palm Valley Blvd.

The event is presented by Austin Emergency Management, according to a Facebook post from the Austin Police Department. The department directed fans to RoundRockTexas.gov/ready and ReadyCentralTexas.org for preparedness information, with tickets available through RoundRockExpress.com. The timing is no accident — Austin Emergency Management announced the game details on August 11, framing the night as a regional kickoff for National Preparedness Month, which arrives every September.

Four Pillars, One Ballpark

Austin Emergency Management structures its outreach around four core pillars: Make a Plan, Build a Kit, Know Your Neighbor, and Stay Informed, according to the department's own guidance on the four steps of emergency preparedness. Those same principles anchored the city's Get Ready Central Texas Emergency Preparedness Fair last September, a related Hoodline effort that covered the fair and its resources in detail. Bringing the message to a Dell Diamond crowd extends that campaign well beyond a single fairground event and into a stadium that, according to MLB.com, seats 8,631 fans with room for 11,631 total spectators once the outfield lawn fills in.

National Preparedness Month itself traces back to 2004, when FEMA established the observance following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, per Ready.gov. The federal Ready Campaign coordinates educational outreach nationwide throughout September, and local agencies like Austin Emergency Management use the month to push residents toward concrete action rather than abstract awareness.

Signing Up for Alerts Before Disaster Strikes

One of the most practical asks tied to the night is getting residents registered for WarnCentralTexas.org, the regional emergency notification platform operated by the Capital Area Council of Governments. The system lets residents across 10 Central Texas counties register mobile devices for hyper-local crisis warnings, a step officials emphasize because landlines are automatically registered in emergency databases while mobile phones require manual sign-up, according to the City of Round Rock.

That kind of interlocal coordination runs deeper than a single alert system. The City of Austin and Williamson County maintain formal agreements including joint participation in the Greater Austin-Travis County Regional Radio System, a shared infrastructure spanning 10 Central Texas counties that lets municipal and county emergency teams communicate in real time, per the City of Austin. The Round Rock Express, for its part, plays as the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers under a 10-year agreement struck before the 2021 season, according to MLB.com, giving the franchise a built-in platform for the kind of civic outreach it has hosted before, including past job fairs at Dell Diamond.

Free Kits and a Track Record of Federal Recovery

Austin Emergency Management has been building household readiness through more than just game nights. The department runs monthly community pop-ups across City Council districts where the first attendees receive free emergency starter kits worth more than $100, including NOAA weather radios, lanterns, and cooling gear, limited to one kit per household. Meanwhile, Round Rock's own Emergency Management Division updates its Hazard Mitigation Action Plan every five years under federal guidelines to address long-term threats like severe freezes, wildfires, and floods, according to the City of Round Rock — a requirement tied to maintaining eligibility for FEMA grant funding.

The financial stakes behind that planning are real. Austin Emergency Management recovered $34.7 million in federal disaster reimbursements during Fiscal Year 2025 for COVID-19 and major storm responses, using damage assessment tools like iSTAT to verify community impacts, as Hoodline reported in December. That recovery underscores why officials keep pressing residents toward the same four steps ahead of the Dell Diamond crowd: a documented disaster response, paired with public buy-in on alerts and home kits, is what keeps federal reimbursement dollars flowing back into Central Texas after the next freeze, flood, or wildfire.