INDIANAPOLIS — There's a vehicle turning heads at this year's Fire Department Instructors Conference.
It's a massive emergency response vehicle called "THOR," which is short for tactical humanitarian operations response.
"It's basically our Swiss army knife of Verizon Frontline services," said Verizon Frontline's media relations manager Eric Durie.
THOR is a prototype that shows off capabilities to deliver communication services in natural disasters.
"If you talk to any first responders that's here at this conference, I'm sure they'll tell you one of the most important things they need in disaster response is communication capabilities," said Durie. "This vehicle is built to provide that under any circumstances."
This vehicle acts as a state-of-the-art mobile command center.
"It's got a tethered drone onboard that could go 300 feet in the air to provide situational awareness, it has two 80-gallon diesel tanks, two generators that can power this vehicle for 150 hours," said Durie. "Really, it's there as a total command center for first responders when they're responding to wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding."
"Tornadoes and hurricanes are unpredictable by nature, so when networks falter, you need redundancies," said Chris Serico, Verizon communications manager. "Thankfully, Verizon has a ton of those, but sometimes you need mobile assets and this is an impressive one."
THOR is on the display floor at the convention center to showcase the capabilities of each of its features to first responders from around the country.
"It's a prototype, so this is not for sale," said Durie. "However, all of the technologies onboard this vehicle, the Indianapolis Fire Department, for example, can take advantage of."
Some of THOR's features can be controlled by a tablet or smartphone.
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