Emergency Information
Where to get real information when the power is out, the cell towers are down, or the water is rising. Every link goes to the authority, not to us.
PolkTX is not an emergency service and is not an alerting authority. This page exists to point you at the people who are. During a hurricane, follow Polk County Emergency Management and the National Weather Service — not a website that might be down when you need it.
Polk County Office of Emergency Management
Disaster declarations, burn bans, evacuation guidance, shelter information and the county's own emergency notifications. When there is a conflict between anything on PolkTX and what the county says, the county is right.
polktx.gov/326/Office-of-Emergency-Management ↗
Get Polk County's alerts on your phone
Calls, texts and email from the Office of Emergency Management for wildfires, evacuations, floods, tornadoes and other emergencies. Tornado and flash flood warnings go out automatically.
Sign up for alerts ↗Texts come from 65513, calls from (936) 237-3255, email from [email protected]. No internet? OEM will register you by phone at 936-327-6826. About the system
Hospitals and emergency rooms
Two places in Polk County take emergency patients around the clock. Call 911 first — this is where they are, not advice about which one to use.
St. Luke's Health–Memorial Livingston
Run by CommonSpirit Health, on the Highway 59 bypass in Livingston. Its emergency department is open around the clock, and it is the county's only facility carrying a state trauma designation. The state, Medicare and the hospital each spell the name differently; they are all this building.
Open 24 hours a day, every day
For anything life-threatening, call 911 and let them decide where you go. An ambulance can start treatment on the way and can be routed past a hospital that cannot take you. This page cannot do either of those things.
Emergency room page ↗Level IV · Basic
Texas designates trauma facilities at four levels, Comprehensive (Level I) through Basic (Level IV). The Department of State Health Services lists this hospital at Level IV through May 1, 2029, in Trauma Service Area H — the Deep East Texas RAC, based in Lufkin.
1717 Highway 59 Bypass, Livingston, TX 77351
66 beds. The hospital says it delivers more than 60,000 patient services a year, about half of them through the emergency department.
Directions ↗The hospital runs an online check-in for the emergency room that lets you pick an arrival time. It is for the visits that can wait. In the hospital's own words: call 911 immediately for life-threatening emergencies.
Online ER check-in ↗It publishes a price list, a cost estimator and a No Surprises Act notice; the notice is CommonSpirit's, not specific to Livingston. PolkTX does not know current wait times, whether the emergency room is on diversion, or which services are staffed today. Call the hospital or call 911.
Sources · 5
CONFIRMED 2026-09-07. The Texas DSHS list of designated trauma facilities, dated August 26, 2026, carries CHI ST LUKES HEALTH MEMORIAL LIVINGSTON as a Basic (Level IV) facility in Livingston 77351, in Trauma Service Area H, designated through 5/1/2029; DSHS names TSA-H's regional advisory council as the Deep East Texas RAC in Lufkin. The CMS Hospital General Information file lists it as an acute care hospital with emergency services. The hospital's own location pages supply the address, the 24-hour schedule, the 66 beds and the annual services figure, and give 936-329-8700 for both the hospital and its emergency room. TWO PHONE NUMBERS ARE IN PUBLIC RECORDS: CMS lists (936) 327-4381. The hospital's own number is the one published here because it is the number the hospital tells patients to call. The state, CMS and the hospital write the name three different ways, all for the same facility. NOT VERIFIED AND NOT STATED: emergency room wait times, diversion or bypass status, which services are staffed on any given day, helicopter availability, and anything about where a patient would be transferred. The price, estimator and No Surprises Act links are the operator's own pages, checked 2026-09-07; the price list is specific to this facility and the estimator is CommonSpirit's portal for it, but the No Surprises Act page is organization-wide rather than about Livingston. The estimator is a client-rendered tool; its page returns 200 under a facility-scoped path and is titled Patient Portal | Get an Online Estimate, but PolkTX did not run an estimate through it. PolkTX does not reproduce any price from them and makes no claim about what a visit costs. Nothing here is medical advice or a reason to drive somewhere instead of calling 911.
- St. Luke's Health – Memorial Hospital – Livingston, hospital location pageread 9/7/26
- Emergency Room at Livingston Hospital, location pageread 9/7/26
- Texas DSHS designated trauma facilitieslist dated 8/26/26
- Texas DSHS regional advisory councilsread 9/7/26
- CMS Hospital General Informationread 9/7/26
Neighbors Regional Hospital – Livingston
On Emergency Drive in Livingston, open around the clock. It trades as part of Neighbors Emergency Center, which lists 9 Texas locations, and its own page notes it was formerly known as Exceptional Emergency Center.
Open 24 hours a day, every day
111 Emergency Dr, Livingston, TX 77351
Directions ↗- Emergency care
- Pediatric care
- On-site imaging
- On-site labs
- Inpatient admission with overnight care
- 23-hour observation
Its own words, from its own page. PolkTX has not checked which of these is available on a given day.
Worth reading before you need it. Its page says both of these:
“We are unable to bill Medicare, Medicaid, or Tricare at our Livingston facility due to federal regulations.”
“We will bill all insurance carriers, including Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), Medicare, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, and other commercial insurance providers.”
Those two do not agree, and PolkTX is not going to guess which one governs your visit. If you are on Medicare, Medicaid or Tricare, call and ask before you need to.
Insurance and billing ↗It also publishes an out-of-network disclosure and a price list. Same caution as above: PolkTX does not know wait times or staffing here either.
Sources · 4
CONFIRMED 2026-09-07 from the facility's own Livingston location page. That page supplies the name, the address, (936) 327-7000, the 24-hour schedule, "Formerly known as Exceptional Emergency Center", and the service list including inpatient admission and 23-hour observation. The group's own menu lists nine Texas locations. THE PAGE CONTRADICTS ITSELF ON MEDICARE and both statements are quoted here rather than resolved: its Insurance And Billing Information section says the Livingston facility is unable to bill Medicare, Medicaid or Tricare, while its FAQ on the same page says the hospital will bill all carriers including Medicare. PolkTX cannot say which governs a given visit and does not try to; a reader who needs to know should call and ask. NOT VERIFIED AND NOT STATED: the advertised door-to-provider wait time, which is marketing that changes and is not published here; the facility's Texas licensure category; whether it is accredited; and staffing on any given day. It does not appear in the CMS Hospital General Information file or on the Texas DSHS trauma facility list — see the record note, which is where that comparison belongs.
- Neighbors Regional Hospital – Livingston, location pageread 9/7/26
- Neighbors patient information and insuranceread 9/7/26
- Neighbors out-of-network disclosure noticeread 9/7/26
- Neighbors price transparencyread 9/7/26
Both of these treat emergencies around the clock, and 911 decides where an ambulance takes you. Where the records separate them: the federal CMS Hospital General Information file returns exactly one hospital for Polk County — St. Luke's Health–Memorial Livingston, an acute care hospital with emergency services — and the Texas DSHS list of designated trauma facilities also names only that one, at Level IV. Neighbors Regional Hospital is in neither, and the organizations registered at its address in the federal NPI registry are enumerated as emergency care clinics rather than as a general acute care hospital. That is what those three records held on September 7, 2026. It is not a judgment about the care at either place. It does bear on billing, on Medicare, and on being admitted or transferred, so it is worth asking about before you need to.
Sources · 3
Each clause traces to a query run on 2026-09-07. CMS Hospital General Information, filtered to state TX and county PARISH POLK, returned one row: CHI ST LUKES HEALTH MEMORIAL LIVINGSTON, Acute Care Hospitals, emergency services Yes. The DSHS designated trauma facilities list, dated August 26, 2026, contains one Livingston row, the same facility, under Basic (Level IV); no row anywhere in that list matches Neighbors. The NPPES registry, queried for organization NPIs in Livingston TX, returns MEMORIAL HOSPITAL OF POLK COUNTY at 1717 Highway 59 Bypass with the primary taxonomy General Acute Care Hospital, Rural, and returns several organizations at 111 Emergency Dr whose primary taxonomies are Clinic/Center, Emergency Care or Clinic/Center — none a hospital taxonomy. THESE ARE RECORDS, NOT VERDICTS. NPPES is self-reported at enumeration and can lag a change; absence from the CMS hospital file is not a statement about licensure, which Texas HHS governs and which PolkTX did not verify because its facility pages refused automated requests. Nothing here says either facility is or is not a licensed hospital, and nothing here is advice about which one to use.
- CMS Hospital General Informationqueried 9/7/26
- Texas DSHS designated trauma facilitieslist dated 8/26/26
- NPPES NPI Registryqueried 9/7/26
When the internet goes down
This is the part most people never think about until it matters.
Upper Lake Livingston Wireless Association
Polk County's amateur radio club, on the air since 2007. Its members run the county's ARES emergency communications and a weekly Skywarn training net. When cell service and internet fail in a hurricane — and in this county they do — amateur radio is what still works.
2nd Thursday of the month, 7:00 PM
Onalaska Volunteer Fire Department, 181 Old Groveton Road, Onalaska
Visitors welcome, and the club runs Zoom on meeting nights. Licensing help is available for anyone who wants to get started.
How to get licensed ↗Worth writing down and keeping with your hurricane supplies. A cheap handheld and this list is a real backup when nothing else is working.
Official sources
Bookmark these before you need them.
National Weather Service, Houston/Galveston
Warnings, watches, radar and hurricane products for Polk County.
Watch Duty
Wildfire tracking reported by volunteers and monitored radio traffic. Free app, no ads.
Trinity River Authority lake data
Lake Livingston levels and dam release information from the operator.
Sam Houston Electric Cooperative
Live outage map and restoration status for co-op members across much of the county.
TxDOT road conditions
Highway closures and road conditions, centered on Polk County.
Texas Division of Emergency Management
State-level disaster declarations and recovery assistance.
School closures
Districts announce through their own systems. We never state whether a district is open.
Before the season starts
- Sign up for AlertMePolkCounty, the county's emergency calls, texts and email. You can add family members' numbers from the same account.
- Know whether your power comes from Entergy or Sam Houston Electric Cooperative, and save that outage number.
- If you're on the lake, know your elevation and your flood zone. Lake level and dam releases are published by the Trinity River Authority.
- Keep a battery or hand-crank radio. Local AM and FM stations stay on the air when the internet does not.
- Write down the repeater frequencies above, even if you aren't licensed. You can listen without a license.
About this page
Every link goes to the organization that owns the information. PolkTX has no affiliation with any of them, earns nothing from these links, and does not issue alerts, warnings or all-clears of any kind.
Something out of date? Tell us.