Synthetic residents and 6 volunteer phones. Nothing reaches a real alert system.
Help that understands you
VoiceFlare helps people evacuate, so fewer lives are lost and getting out is easier. It calls every household in its own language, moves neighborhoods out block by block so the roads stay clear, finds the people who cannot leave on their own and sends a helper to their exact spot. Before any alert wakes a city, it checks with the neighbors at the zone’s edge, and a named person approves every word.
DUAL-USEOne system, two days: 🔥 the rules that run a wildfire night also run 🌡️ a heat check-in line for older residents on an ordinary hot Tuesday. See both days
Long Beachthe judge's phone, far from the fireRinging“Nothing here.”
Culver City, east edgePhone 3Ringing“Yes, smoke to the west.”
Culver City, south edgePhone 4Ringing“Yes, smoke to the west.”
Send now
Hold once
Edit polygon
Cancel
Hand off
CanaryAfter the send, a phone just outside the zone is asked whether the alert reached it.Westchester, outside the zone: “Did you just receive an evacuation order?”Westchester, outside the zone: “No.” Delivery is clear.
Replay of the demo’s hold at 4× speed, with the Westside scenario’s estimates. What the replay shows: the hold opens on a countywide polygon that would wake about 9,800,000 people, 239 times the zone. The sentinel in Long Beach answers “nothing here”. The supervisor edits the polygon to Culver City and Palms, about 41,000 people. Two sentinels on Culver City’s edge answer “yes, smoke to the west”. The supervisor sends with 58 seconds left. The canary phone in Westchester, outside the zone, did not get the alert, so delivery is clear. If nobody had decided, the order would have sent on time at 0:00.
Dual-use: one system, two days
The brief asks for a second customer who uses it on an ordinary Tuesday: the engine and the rules that run a wildfire night also run a heat check-in line for older residents on a hot day.
Switch the day. The rungs stay in place; only the work on each one changes.
Crisis
🔥The fire night
Every day
🌡️An ordinary hot Tuesday
The decider
On the fire night: The overnight supervisor of an emergency call line.
On a hot Tuesday: A named person at a city or county heat check-in line for older residents.
The moment
On the fire night: A wildfire at night, before an Evacuation Order wakes a zone.
On a hot Tuesday: A hot day, when a neighborhood gets a National Weather Service heat alert or its live temperature climbs.
Who gets called
On the fire night: Sentinels at the zone’s edge, then the residents inside it.
On a hot Tuesday: Older residents who opted in. People who live alone or have no air conditioning go first.
The demo
On the fire night: Westside LA, or the Norte Fire in San Clemente at its live location. Synthetic residents.
On a hot Tuesday: San Fernando Valley demo zones. Synthetic residents.
The same five rungs
1
Watch
On the fire night:
Zones sit on the Cal OES ladder. A fire model proposes changes; only the supervisor can approve one.
On a hot Tuesday:
Live temperatures and National Weather Service heat alerts, neighborhood by neighborhood.
2
Ask
On the fire night:
Sentinels at the zone’s edge get a call: does this match what you see?
On a hot Tuesday:
Seniors who opted in get a call: can you stay cool? Do you need water, a ride to a cooling center, or a visit?
3
Slow
On the fire night:
Calls go edge-first, in waves. The evacuation moves block by block: patches about half a mile (800 m) on a side, several per wave, on assigned exit roads, so the roads don’t jam.
On a hot Tuesday:
Calls go in priority order, not all at once. A named person approves the heat message and the cooling-center list.
4
Hold
On the fire night:
Before an Order, a 90-second hold shows how many phones it will wake. The hold can delay an alert, never stop one.
On a hot Tuesday:
Nothing goes out until that person approves it.
5
Hand to a person
On the fire night:
From the help registry, with consent, a person’s live location goes to the response team and a helper goes to the exact spot. Pickup vans come for people who can’t leave.
On a hot Tuesday:
A ride to a cooling center or a wellness visit, with the same helper flow as the fire night. Heat-stroke warning signs mean 911. No answer twice means the linked contact, then a door knock.
The agent reads only the words that person approved.
It never gives an ETA and never says anyone is safe.
Silence is never treated as safe.
Every decision goes in the ledger, with a name and a reason.
Other second customers, same rules
🪖Military basesBase mode has its own ladder: avoid, evacuate to the accountability point, lockdown, all clear.
🖼️Galleries and archivesThe collections line offers help moving collections, only at Warning. It always ranks below people.How the collections line works
🌏Six jurisdictionsUS-California, China, Japan, Greece/EU, India and Australia.Compare the six profiles
When the alerts failed
Real incidents behind the build, with sources. For each one: what went wrong, what VoiceFlare does about it, and what it would not have changed.
phones got a Jan 9, 2025 evacuation warning meant for one fire area; the target polygon was never saved to the wireless channel
East Altadena got evacuation orders at 7:26 PM; west of Lake Avenue the first orders came at 3:25 AM, about 8 hours later. 18 of the 19 people who died lived west of Lake.
Just after midnight a county paramedic squad saw embers falling "like snow" and houses burning west of Lake; it was not assigned to the incident, so no one in command heard it.
A father who used a wheelchair and his son with cerebral palsy died at home after three 911 calls.
What VoiceFlare does
Sentinels
People enrolled at the west edge are asked "does this match what you see?" before and during the night, so a sighting like the paramedics' reaches the person deciding within minutes.
Edge-first + needs-first calls
The first calls go to the households nearest the fire and to people who cannot leave alone, and each "I can't leave" becomes a P1 or P2 registry row with a location for the response team.
Ledger
Every order is logged with who decided, when and why; the county review found no reliable record of who ordered each alert.
What it would not change. VoiceFlare does not decide evacuations or add deputies; a named human still decides. It shortens the path from someone seeing fire to that person.
January 7, 2025 in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles
Palisades fire: alerts after the homes were burning
Some residents nearest the ignition point got their first alert 40 to 90 minutes after homes had begun burning (FSRI).
City staff drew evacuation zones by hand from street names read over the radio, and officials were cautious about over-warning.
Late warnings meant everyone left at once: gridlock on Palisades Drive and Sunset, about 350 cars abandoned and pushed aside by a bulldozer, while cell networks were down or overloaded.
What VoiceFlare does
Dose preview + hold
The supervisor sees exactly who an order wakes (a neighborhood, not a county), so a targeted order is safe to send fast; the hold never blocks it and sends on time.
Edge-first + needs-first calls
Calls ring out in rings from the fire's edge, so the people nearest the ignition hear first, by name and in their language.
Dark zone
When a block's phones go silent at once, the board flags a dark zone and moves those households to door-knock lists.
What it would not change. VoiceFlare cannot clear roads or direct traffic, and it needs a working phone network or a door knock to reach people.
October 16, 2026 (burning on demo weekend) in San Clemente, Orange County
Norte fire: an Order with no warning first
570 acres, 5% contained as of Oct 17, 9:47 AM; about 16,000 residents under evacuation orders (CAL FIRE, OCFA)
The 911 call came at 11:33 AM; Orders for five zones went out at 12:54 PM, with no Warning step before them.
A mother and her 6-year-old were still at their door with the fire about 300 feet away; a passer-by who had seen a phone alert knocked and got them out.
The county's written order notice came about four hours later, as an English-only scanned image.
What VoiceFlare does
Sentinels
Edge sentinels and the fire model propose a Warning early, so people who need time get a head start before an Order.
Silence rules
A household that does not answer gets a retry, then its named neighbor, then a door-knock row: no one depends on a passer-by.
Verbatim relay
Each call reads the approved order in the person's language, with the route and shelter, minutes after it is approved.
What it would not change. VoiceFlare does not fight the fire or decide the order; the order is still OCFA's and the county's.
How it works
The hackathon asked for the gentlest response that still works when an automated system misbehaves: watch, ask, slow, hold, hand to a person. VoiceFlare puts every rung on the supervisor's board.
1
Watch
Models and feeds only propose. A fire model or a pattern in the calls draws a dashed zone, and nothing calls anyone until a named human approves it, with a reason.
On the board: Dashed zones on the map; model proposals in the Zones tab.
2
Ask
Before an order goes out, sentinels at the zone’s edge get a call: does this alert match what you see? Yes, no or not sure.
On the board: Sentinel answers in the hold strip.
3
Slow
The supervisor sees the dose before any phone rings: how many people the polygon wakes. Calls then go edge-first and needs-first, 5 at a time, instead of one blast.
On the board: “Wakes about” in the hold strip; pins filling in from the edge.
4
Hold
An Evacuation Order waits 90 seconds for Send now, Hold once, Edit polygon, Cancel or Hand off. If nobody decides, it sends on time: the machine can delay an alert, never stop one.
On the board: The hold strip and its clock.
5
Hand to a person
Every exit is a named human, and every call carries only what that human approved.
Calls
An AI voice (Retell AI on the phone network, Claude as the agent) says it is an AI and reads only the approved directive, route and shelter, in the person’s language.
Delivery
A canary phone inside the polygon and one outside report whether the alert arrived.
Silence
No answer becomes a retry, then a call to a linked contact, then a door-knock row.
Help
P1 needs help now, P2 needs help leaving, P3 not reached: the quick response team works the list.
Ledger
Every human decision, with a name and a reason, and every AI refusal.
Calls in
English
Español
한국어
中文
हिन्दी
Français
Հայերեն
Tagalog
On the board: Live calls, the Help registry and the Ledger; the QRT tablet.
What's on the screens
The demo runs on 4 kinds of screen. Here is what each one shows, who holds it, and how to set the room up.
Zones colored by ladder state, the metrics, live calls, the hold strip, the feed and Ask the board, with zones, proposals, the help registry and the ledger in the side panel.
Who holds it: The big screen. The supervisor drives it.
Twist 2 asked how firefighters in China would run it. The 6 safety rules stay the same in every country, and 6 adapters change. Here is an evacuation order in each of the 6 profiles, with the number the call tells people to ring.
US-CA911the call says
Evacuation Order
Los Angeles, California, USA
CN119the call says
转移指令 Relocation order
Chongqing, China
JP119the call says
警戒レベル4 避難指示
Ōfunato, Iwate, Japan
EU-GR112the call says
112: Εκκενώστε τώρα (evacuate now)
Rhodes, Greece (EU)
IN112the call says
District evacuation order
Odisha, India
AU000the call says
Emergency Warning: leave now
East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia
Stays the same everywhere
A named human approves every directive.
The edge is asked first.
The dose shows before the send, and the hold sends on time.
The agent reads only approved text, and says it is an AI voice.
People at the edge only answer on the bad night if the line is part of ordinary days. The same screen serves 3 customers between emergencies.
🌡️Heat mode
A city’s senior services desk
On hot days the zones follow the weather. Live readings and any National Weather Service heat alert propose a level, and a person approves it. Older people who live alone or have no air conditioning get the first calls: a ride to a cooling center, a check-in visit, or “hang up and call 911” at the first sign of heat stroke.
🛡️Base mode
An installation’s command post
Before a base-wide lockdown, housing areas, gates and the flight line are the zones, and gate posts and housing phones are the sentinels. The registry speaks personnel accountability (ADPAAS, NFAAS, AFPAAS): accounted and unaccounted.
🖼️Collections line
Museums, libraries, archives and collectors
They enroll, keep a short grab list of what to save first and answer a monthly test call. When a warning comes, they can ask for help moving it while there is still time. Lives first, always.
Museums, libraries, archives and collectors get the same verified warnings, and a way to ask for help moving what cannot be replaced while there is still time. Lives first, always.
For a gallery, a library, an archive or a private collection in the path of fire, flood or storm: the same calls, the same human approval, and a place in the queue that always comes after people.
1
Ordinary Tuesday
Institutions and collectors enroll, keep a short grab list of priority items, and answer a monthly test call.
Rule: The list is theirs; it is shared only with the response team.
2
Warning
The call reads the approved warning first, then asks whether they need help moving priority items while there is time.
Rule: Salvage requests rank below every life-safety request.
3
Order
The call reads the order and says leave now. A request for help after the fire can be logged.
Rule: Never offer salvage under an order; never tell anyone to stay for objects.
4
After
Salvage requests go to heritage responders while there is still time to save wet or smoke-damaged items.
Rule: The agent never promises that anyone will come.
Real cases, with sources
January 8, 2025, Altadena (Eaton fire)
A 3 AM warning, three works saved
Collectors Joy Silverman and George Bermudez had a warning, not an order: an alert woke them at 3 AM and they packed three artworks. The house and the rest of the collection burned.
With VoiceFlare: At Warning, the call reads the approved warning, then asks once whether they need help moving their grab list; a heritage team gets the request while roads are open, ranked below every person.
Art handlers could help only before a zone turned red
Fine-art shippers pulled work out of yellow (prepare to leave) zones but would not enter red ones; one storage firm had 5 to 10 times its normal requests in the first week.
With VoiceFlare: The salvage window is the Warning stage, so the request goes out then, with the zone, the address and the grab list, not after the order.
An alert at 10:45 AM, a collection gone by afternoon
Collector Ron Rivlin got his first alert at 10:45 AM, judged the fire would not cross Sunset, and left with three Warhol prints; hundreds of works, about 30 of them Warhols, burned.
With VoiceFlare: A call that reads the approved warning and asks a direct question ("do you need help moving your list?") turns a judgment call into a plan while there is still time.
Artists Adam and Caitlin Ross went back into the flames once to pull 11 paintings, then watched their studio burn; about 5,000 works were lost.
With VoiceFlare: The agent never tells anyone to stay or go back for objects. Under an Order the only instruction is to leave; a request for help is logged for after the fire.
More than 100,000 Arnold Schoenberg scores and parts at Belmont Music Publishers burned, and so did the digital backup kept on site; the originals in Vienna were safe.
With VoiceFlare: Enrollment on an ordinary Tuesday is when a holder writes the grab list and says what cannot be replaced; VoiceFlare keeps it with the household, so the warning call can act on it.
June 29 to July 8, 2026, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, India
A week of rain in Pimpri-Chinchwad
After a week of continuous rain (268 mm in 24 hours at Chinchwad), water reached first floors in Tanajinagar, Keshavnagar and Laxminagar and more than 1,500 people were trapped. In India's 2018 Kerala floods, more than 225 public libraries were hit.
With VoiceFlare: River levels and dam releases give hours of notice: riverside homes, libraries and collectors get a call at Warning in their language, with the collections question asked while the water is still rising.
NSF SBIR Phase I (NSF 26-510, up to $305,000, no equity) pays to prove the 90-second edge read, multilingual distress classification and the canary, in drills with a county emergency office.
Counties buy it with FEMA UASI and EMPG grants, since public alert and warning systems are on FEMA’s Authorized Equipment List. Installations come through DoD SBIR and the Defense Innovation Unit.
Misuse: a wrong or compromised zone directive would be relayed to everyone in it, a colluding sentinel panel could delay a real warning, and the registry is a list of real people at real locations.
Limits: the agent reads only the directive a named human approved for the zone the phone is in and can change nothing else; the hold is capped and never blocks a send; every refusal and every human decision is in a ledger; the registry stores phone, zone, needs and last location, is visible only to the response team, and is purged 72 hours after the incident closes.
