When a crisis hits, your community needs to hear from you. Right now.
Wildfires, floods, pandemics, evacuations — every emergency follows the same pattern: a window of hours where accurate information from trusted voices can save lives and prevent panic. Converso deploys emergency telephone town halls, mass voice broadcasts, and SMS alerts to your entire community within hours of your call. We're available 24/7, every day of the year.
In a crisis, the communication gap kills trust — and sometimes people.
When a wildfire spreads, a pandemic escalates, or floodwaters rise, your community needs to hear directly from you. Not from social media speculation. Not from news channels that may have it wrong. From you — their government, their health authority, their emergency management team — live, two-way, right now.
We don't need days to set up. We need hours.
Our team is available around the clock, every day of the year. When you call us — at 2 a.m. during an evacuation order, on a holiday weekend when a dam breaks — we will answer, gather the critical details, build your phone list from available geographic data, prepare your spokesperson script, and have a live emergency town hall running within hours. We've done this in Fort McMurray with the Premier on the line. We did it 40 times in spring 2020 when COVID-19 hit. We can do it for you, right now, exactly when you need it.
Every channel you need — deployed simultaneously.
A real emergency response doesn't rely on a single channel. Converso coordinates telephone, SMS, voice broadcast, and online at the same time, reaching every resident regardless of age, location, or device.
Emergency Telephone Town Halls
Live, two-way telephone town halls with your Mayor, Premier, Chief Medical Officer, or Emergency Manager. We call affected residents directly — no app, no login, no tech barrier. They pick up the phone and they're in. Live Q&A so they can ask what they need to know.
Explore Meetings →Voice Broadcasting
Reach thousands of residents within minutes with a pre-recorded or live voice message — evacuation orders, shelter locations, curfew information, water safety alerts. Messages are delivered simultaneously to every number on your list, with callback options and message confirmation.
SMS/MMS Mass Alerts
Text-based emergency alerts delivered to cell phones across the affected area. Include maps, images, and links to updated information. SMS reaches residents who may not answer an unknown phone call — and provides a written record of instructions they can refer to later.
Explore Outreach →IVR Information Lines
Deploy automated interactive phone lines that residents can call to get updated emergency information — without requiring staff to handle thousands of simultaneous inquiries. Press 1 for evacuation routes. Press 2 for shelter locations. Press 3 for updates. Residents get answers; your staff stays focused on the crisis.
Multi-Channel Coordination
A real crisis response uses every channel simultaneously — phone, SMS, online audio streaming, and social media feeds from the same event. Converso coordinates all channels from a single event so your message is consistent, your spokespersons are supported, and your community hears one unified voice.
Crisis Preparedness Planning
Before a crisis hits, we work with your team to build a telephone town hall crisis response plan — pre-recorded messages, prepared scripts, geographic phone lists, and a specific client crisis profile. When the emergency comes, your response time is minimized because the preparation is already done.
Fort McMurray Wildfire — 17 events in 30 days, 58,000 displaced residents
May–June 2016. The largest wildfire evacuation in Canadian history. The Premier of Alberta needed to speak directly to 58,000 displaced residents spread across evacuation centres from Lac La Biche to Edmonton — with no reliable way to reach them all at once.
What happened
Converso was deployed within days of the evacuation order. Working directly with the Premier, Deputy-Premier, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and the Public Affairs Bureau, we produced 17 live telephone town halls over 30 consecutive days — reaching residents wherever they had evacuated, on whatever phone they had access to.
Each event connected evacuees to senior government officials in real time. Residents could ask questions about when they could return, what was happening to their homes, what supports were available. The events gave accurate information, visible leadership, and a two-way connection that social media and press releases could not provide.
When the crisis ended, the Government of Alberta had produced more emergency communication events in 30 days than most governments do in a decade. They came back to Converso for every emergency since.
COVID-19 Emergency Response — 40+ events, multiple provinces, spring 2020
When COVID-19 was declared a national emergency in March 2020, governments and health authorities across Canada needed to communicate unprecedented public health measures to millions of residents — immediately, accurately, and at scale.
Government of Alberta
Converso produced 40 emergency events for the Government of Alberta from March through July 2020, including direct public health town halls and Alberta Emergency Management Agency sessions. Eight AEMA events were delivered in April–May alone at the peak of the first wave.
Region of Durham, Ontario
A single 90-minute COVID-19 telephone town hall reached 100,000 Region of Durham residents — giving them direct access to public health officials to ask questions about the pandemic response, testing sites, and local restrictions.
City of Mississauga
Five COVID-19 telephone town halls featuring Mayor Bonnie Crombie, City Councillors, the Chief Medical Officer, and the local hospital CEO — giving Mississauga residents direct access to their city's full pandemic leadership team simultaneously.
26 events, 40,000 citizens, May–September 2020
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo experienced catastrophic flooding in 2020 — just four years after the wildfire evacuation. Converso delivered 26 events across the May–September recovery period, engaging approximately 40,000 citizens about flood recovery, mitigation timelines, and support programs. The same team also produced employee town halls, media conference calls, and Council Meeting broadcasts throughout the emergency.
What emergency managers say.
"The ability to reach thousands of residents simultaneously, live, with the Premier on the line — that's not something we had before Converso. It changed how we think about emergency communications entirely."
"When the flood hit, we didn't have time to think about how to communicate. We called Converso. They had us up and running before we finished the briefing call. The community needed to hear from us, and they did."
"One hundred thousand residents. One session. Every question answered live. I don't know any other way to do what Converso does — and in a pandemic, it made all the difference."
From your call to live — in hours, not days.
Emergency response doesn't follow a project timeline. Our process is built for speed: you tell us what's happening, we handle everything from there.
You call us — 24/7
Our team answers around the clock. Describe the crisis: what happened, where, how many people are affected. We gather what we need in a single call.
We build the response plan
We identify the geographic phone list, confirm your spokesperson lineup, draft the opening script, and set up the event platform — simultaneously, while you're preparing your officials.
We brief your team
A rapid 20-minute pre-event briefing with your Mayor, Premier, or Emergency Manager. We cover format, flow, Q&A procedures, and key talking points. Your team goes in confident.
We go live
Converso dials out to your entire affected community simultaneously. Residents pick up and are in the town hall. Live Q&A with screening, simultaneous online audio streaming, and real-time reporting as the event runs.
Full record delivered
Within hours of the event: full audio recording, Q&A transcript, attendance summary, and an executive report. The record is yours — for public accountability, legal protection, and future planning.
From wildfires to pandemics to floods — they've all called Converso.
Don't wait for the next crisis to figure out your communications plan.
The governments and municipalities that respond fastest are the ones that had a relationship with Converso before the emergency. We recommend every client set up a crisis preparedness plan — so when you call us at 2 a.m., the setup time is measured in minutes, not hours.
- Available 24/7 — including weekends and holidays
- Deploy within hours — not days
- Phone, SMS, voice broadcast, IVR — all channels available
- Full audio, transcript, and executive report after every event
- CRTC-compliant; bilingual events available
- Crisis preparedness planning available before any emergency occurs
Request a briefing
In an active emergency? Call us directly. For preparedness planning, use the form below.