Disaster drill tests HERO tech

March 24, 2026

By Adam Hammons

AUSTIN — Two wildfires and a hurricane – three scenarios powerful enough to cripple critical infrastructure. It’s also a perfect training exercise to work out how to use a new emergency response tool called HERO box.

Thankfully these two wildfires and a hurricane weren’t real, but were part of a recent training exercise preparing employees for real-life scenarios in which communication is lost during an emergency.

That almost happened during a storm in 2025 when a couple of TxDOT buildings saw minor damage. The concern is that Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) could go down, hampering the local and regional response in that area.

Getting EOCs back up and running is critical. That’s where the HERO boxes come in.

Karl Schumacher, TxDOT’s information technology emergency response coordinator, said a HERO box contains deployable IT equipment used to restore or expand IT capabilities during emergency operations.

One box contains five laptops, ten cellphones, four iPads, four MiFi hotspots, and a second box contains a portable router to reconnect to internet. Both go together to make one set of boxes.

The two boxes weigh about 150 pounds each. Their bulk and weight can make it difficult to travel, which is why Schumacher needed to figure out how they would be delivered across the state.

So, if you’re going to have a training exercise, why not make it extra difficult with two wildfires and a hurricane all going on at the same time?

“Just those little details as we're going through and talking through these are incredibly important for us to develop our plans,” Schumacher said.

Schumacher and multiple districts and divisions at TxDOT set up fake EOCs in Austin, Childress, Waco and Yoakum with people working in each area. Then crews in Austin drove the boxes to each area, talking with local crews about how to set them up.

“When you're in the middle of the chaos, it may not function like you intended to, but having a kind of a real-life scenario, I think it helps everybody be prepared and know their role and what we're going to have to do,” said Michael Brzozowski, TxDOT director of operations in Yoakum.

This is just one of many emergency exercises TxDOT does that goes from tabletop to field. All of them help the agency stay prepared for any severe weather event.

“This particular exercise was unique in the fact that it involved new technology and real-world testing of the deployment and set up of the tech,” TxDOT Emergency Management Coordinator Matthew Heinze said. “This exercise has proven the value of having a strong IT relationship with emergency operations.”

Overall, Schumacher said the exercise was a success and they learned a lot to help prepare for the real thing. However, even though he says the name “HERO” is fitting, he doesn’t quite know where it comes from.

“I don't have a good answer for that,” Schumacher said. “It's heroic in that we're helping. We're helping the districts help Texans.”