Episode 305: What Experience Teaches Us About Risk And Resilience with Sophia Curnow

Episode notes

What does a farming background teach you about firefighting, risk, and resilience?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, we sit down with Sophia Curnow , a Western Australia firefighter with more than 22 years of operational experience. Sophia shares how her background in farming and land management shaped her approach to firefighting, risk reduction, and water use, along with lessons learned from incidents like Cyclone Seroja and asbestos contamination events.

The conversation explores practical technology that reduces firefighter exposure, the value of science and engineering for operational crews, and why living with fire, rather than fighting every ember, matters. Sophia also reflects on the importance of listening to those with deeper knowledge, including Indigenous communities whose understanding of fire spans generations.

So take a listen to hear what she has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 0:47 Meet Sophia Curnow
3. 1:35 22 years in the fire service
4. 3:53 Getting involved with the IFE
5. 6:51 Tech that caught her eye at the show
6. 9:49 Pain points: staffing and community
7. 10:45 Cyclone Seroja and asbestos contamination
8. 12:38 Lessons from farming and land management
9. 14:28 Living with fire and Indigenous knowledge
10. 15:54 Words to live by

Questions answered in this episode

How did Sophia Curnow get into firefighting?

She saw a firefighter display at the Royal Show when she was about 15 years old and asked her mom if girls were allowed in the fire brigade. After university and traveling, she applied but was rejected the first time. She applied again and was accepted. She has now been a firefighter for 22 years.

Hear it at 1:46

What is one technology Sophia saw at the conference that caught her attention?

A hose roller created by operational firefighters from South Australia. The device helps minimize exposure when handling dirty hose after incidents, and Sophia says she could see her department adopting it.

Hear it at 7:33

What lessons from farming does Sophia apply to firefighting?

Water management is a big one. Growing up on a farm, she learned to be mindful of water use because they collected their own water, unlike in urban environments where you just turn on a tap. She also considers soil chemistry and the capacity to let things burn in a controlled way rather than always extinguishing.

Hear it at 12:59

What does Sophia say about learning from indigenous knowledge in Australia?

Sophia says in Australia they have so much to learn from indigenous people, whose knowledge and understanding of native species of flora is so much greater than hers. The Australian environment is adapted to fire, with many species of Australian plants requiring fire to crack open seed pods to continue their life cycles. She thinks there's a lot of space to sit back and give a voice to people with 65,000 years of cultural knowledge rather than always leading that conversation.

Hear it at 14:56

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 305 transcript

What Experience Teaches Us About Risk And Resilience with Sophia Curnow

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Sophia Curnow

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, researchers, and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting to a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption, to the rise of new technologies like Satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for These episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. Hello, what's going on? Sophia Curnow with, how you Sophia.

[0:50] Sophia Curnow: I'm great.

[0:51] Kevin Sofen: Happy AFAC, happy IFE show, great to be in Perth. How are things?

[0:57] Sophia Curnow: Excellent, I've absolutely loved being here the last few days.

[1:01] Kevin Sofen: I forget where are you based full-time?

[1:03] Sophia Curnow: I Hope Valley Fire Station [inaudible 1:06] area in the state.

[1:35] Kevin Sofen: So you have now been in the fire service. How long have you been a firefighter now?

[1:39] Sophia Curnow: 22 years.

[1:40] Kevin Sofen: 22 years. What drew you to the fire service? How did you think, you know

[1:46] Sophia Curnow: Well I didn't even know if I was going to be allowed to become a firefighter. When I first had the idea I was about 15 years old and I went home from seeing a firefighter display at the Royal Show and I asked my mom if they let girls in the fire brigade and she didn't know. So, towards the end of my schooling, I investigated that. And no doubt that to my knowledge, they did. I got the pack sent out and I quickly realised that was for someone much more mature and responsible than I was at that point. So I continued with university and went travelling, did all the usual. Young people things. And when I came back from travelling, I had already decided that I was going to have a go. I felt that I felt that as someone with a passion in sport and in science, also coming. from a farming and therefore land management background, something like the fire service was going to tick a lot of boxes, of my interests and was hopefully not going to mean that I would have to sit at a desk too many hours per week and yeah so I threw my hat in the ring, I was rejected the first time for a very long process and was quietly devastated, but had a second go and got in,

[3:00] Kevin Sofen: good on you.

[3:01] Sophia Curnow: In 22 years, here I am.

[3:02] Kevin Sofen: Way to be persistent and amazing, interesting background. And I'm curious about now we're sitting here at the Institution of Fire Engineers,

[3:23] Sophia Curnow: Guessing anyone who wants the sugar fix is going to want the sweeter milk chocolate option.

[3:29] Kevin Sofen: Going to have to do a bit more research here.

[3:31] Sophia Curnow: And for special needs people like me, I have to have the gluten free option.

[3:35] Kevin Sofen: Yes.

[3:36] Sophia Curnow: Remarkably good.

[3:37] Kevin Sofen: Do they have gluten free Tim Tam?

[3:39] Sophia Curnow: They absolutely. [inaudible 3:42]

[3:53] Kevin Sofen: in public safety. Tell me more about kind of how you have worked with and aligned with the IFE and kind of how have you connected and worked with the IFE over the years.

[4:01] Sophia Curnow: Right, so IFE was not something that was promoted or that I was even aware of when I went through recruit school, but not that long after that, once. I was on shift. I was chatting with my district officer, John Truswell and said how I had expected that there would be more content in our learning that was more focused on science and engineering. And he said, oh well, you want to become part of the IFE. And I sort of went, well, what's the IFE? And he clued me in, and in his day becoming a station officer, you had to be a graduate of the IFE. And I consequently became involved through him. I ultimately am the secretary of the WA branch of the IFE, which no longer exists. I stood down from that role just before I had my first child and I believe it was about two years after that the WA branch was absorbed into the national organisation and that's where it stands now. So after hiatus I suppose and having David Dow come on shift with me and talking passionately about the IFE and him being surprised that I knew what that was, I felt that it was time to become re-involved. So over the last year or two with Dave on shift with me, we've been I guess just be discussing those things a lot and I get to kind of double my toe in the science [inaudible 5:30] I actually sent it to me on Tuesday, but because we've been so busy doing this, I haven't actually watched it yet. Well, listen to it. I don't even know, I haven't even opened it, but that is one of my stories.

[6:09] Kevin Sofen: And then one thing we talked about, and we'll explore in the future, is there's a history lesson, and there's a fire service engineer or, yeah, fire service engineer in every country that has some sort of history to be celebrated. I don't know what those are, I don't know who those people are, but Dave and I are talking about doing a little mini-series with all the different heroes from each state.

[6:26] Sophia Curnow: And Dave is of knowledge, honestly, even when we do the Saturday quiz from the newspaper on station, Dave is the go-to guy, particularly for any kind of history.

[6:38] Kevin Sofen: Yeah and I have to phone a friend in those moments. I am terrible with that, but I can put microphones and cameras in people's faces and ask them questions. Well, you know, we all got to play to our strengths.

[6:47] Sophia Curnow: This is true. And that is absolutely yours, I can see.

[6:50] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I enjoy it. Well,. So then to kind of lean back to part of the conversation of you're an operational firefighter and you're in the weeds. I'm curious with your, you just kind of surveying everything here at the show. Is there any technologies or any boosts or anything you've seen here that kind of is like, man, you know, that really catches my attention. I know yesterday I saw you're working on that sort of the hand cray. company was, gosh, I'm breaking operational fire, so it was just like, okay, you're just calling a spade a spade, but whether it's that or something else, anything that kind of speaks

[7:33] Sophia Curnow: to you as an operational firefighter that you see really solving a problem. a bit overwhelmed by all the things to look at, I literally walked past the IFE stand this morning because of all the shiny things. Yeah. So, no, that's a perfect example. That hose roller is amazing. And chatting with those guys yesterday, they were operational firefighters from a similar demographic area in South Australia to what I am in here. So, yeah, we were totally on the same level when we were talking about what had driven them towards creating. Plus the space created by Lockdowns and COVID meant that they could a workshop their idea and actually turn it into a product. Being something smaller and more easily added on to our appliances. It is something I could definitely see DFS picking up, and I hope that I'll be able to speak to the relevant people and promote that. Yeah, there's just so many ideas here. One that stands out for me again in the occupational hygiene, minimizing exposure space is the commercial washing machine essentially for [inaudible 8:53] as after the fact and on station, touching dirty set. However, the washing process also exposes us because we're handling dirty equipment. So to be able to offload that to a machine, and one of the things. We learn in our risk mitigation is eliminate risk where you can. It speaks to that really well, to be able to put a set into a machine instead of have staff handling that is fabulous.

[9:45] Kevin Sofen: operational firefighter like yourself. I like that point of eliminate risk where we. What are some other examples of pain points that you experience or areas where you're like, man, we have some room for opportunity or in just kind of [inaudible 10:01]

[10:15] Sophia Curnow: It's like nothing that's massive. Little things are good, so I'm curious. Even just within our organization, ways that we can better some of our staffing. We used to have a role on each station where people would shift from between A and C platoon or B and D platoon. I can see that as, that's more on the administrative side of things. But going back to that, to reduce the workload of our staff deployment. I think bringing the community with us probably the big one. Between Cyclone Seroja, which Mel Paxton was talking about earlier, and what West Australians would know very much became a asbestos event because so many of the homes in Kalbarri which was the town that was impacted by Cyclone Seroja, so many of those homes were asbestos, that pretty much the whole town became a hazmat incident. Very close on the heels of Because of that, actually my uncle's house was impacted by his neighbor's property burning down and it was an asbestos home. He had to move out. And that then got my parents who owned the farm that I grew up on thinking about the asbestos house on that property as a risk if there would a be an incident and it's not just contaminating the neighbor's garden or fibers entering windows, et cetera, but to then potentially be impacting farming land, and I don't know what lessons there may be to learn from the Kalbarri area and Seroja, but what this looks like, in terms of planning going forward to mitigate the risk of viable farming land or other assets that can be, at least in a short term, but potentially longer term, impacted by the contamination of these sorts of incidents and how we mitigate it to begin with. But then also if we do have these incidents, how we can clean that up in a timely fashion and not be taking years, potentially, maybe like we've seen discussed just now also with the Palisades, that because of their resourcing, they've been able to do a lot of recovery things within a six-month timeframe that just would not happen here because of economy of scale that we can't do as well as America can.

[12:38] Kevin Sofen: You've mentioned now farming and land management a couple of different contexts, . I'm curious to lean into that a little bit more. What has farming and land management helped teach you within your role in the fire service in terms of how to be a better firefighter or what lessons can be learned from farming and land management as it pertains to the fire service?

[12:59] Sophia Curnow: Okay, probably the one that sticks out the most for me would be water management. When you live and grow up on a farm, you are mindful of how much water you use when you wash your hands, when you have a shower, when you flush the toilet, when you do the dishes, make sure we don't do three lots of dishes a day, you do one lot of dishes so you're managing water in a way that we don't manage water in an urban environment because you just turn a tap on, and there's always water there, but that, but that doesn't happen when you're collecting and your own, pardon me, your own water. So water management is probably a big part of that. But then also, another thing that firefighters holistically probably think less about is soil b chemistry, and how that Certainly we have people within DFES who are very focused on that but at firefighter level it's not something that the average firefighter is thinking about. Then also the consideration of not necessarily to extinguish this glowing in the fire ground but in terms of, again, it ties into water usage. Yeah, the capacity to let things burn, but monitor and do that in a controlled way.

[14:28] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and I know that within the American context I've heard, and this is a global context, but of knowing that not all fire is bad fire and continue to live with a fire, living with the land. And there's a lot that we can learn from some of the First Nation and indigenous, this aboriginal personas about living with the fire and not always trying to over engineer the land but kind of living with the land, living with the fire, living with earth in a way that allows us to do it in a way that's respectful and sustainable.

[14:56] Sophia Curnow: Yeah. In Australia, we have so much to learn from our indigenous people. The knowledge and understanding of the native species of flora in this context of flora is so much greater, I suppose, than certainly mine, and the Australian environment is adapted to fire. So, I mean, there are many species of Australian plants that actually require a crack open seed pods to continue their life cycles. So, I think there's a lot of space in that area for us to sit back and give a voice to people with, you know, 65,000 years of cultural knowledge in that space rather than always being the ones that are leading that conversation.

[15:46] Kevin Sofen: Thank you for that context and insight. I'll be getting a couple of stares out there as far as the, I think there's maybe some other people shooting or going to get on the pod or something in here. So to kind of wrap it up with one question, Sophie, I'm curious, is there any quote or words of wisdom that you live by within your

[16:11] Sophia Curnow: So in the next 30 years living out that theory. I'm 22 years in and so far I'm so far so good. The other one is the one a reference all the time with my children which is honor is the gift you give yourself and that can mean so many different things but probably at this phase of my life and in this facet of it means looking at others a like, knowledge and experience than me [inaudible 16:58]

[17:26] Kevin Sofen: tomorrow and I'm excited to continue to just support and flourish his desires and curiosity of being a dirty, wonderful, and beautiful, happy child.

[17:37] Sophia Curnow: I'm absolutely certain he will only enjoy being a dirty, and happy child.

[17:42] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, me too. Well, Sophia, thank you so much for what you're doing, for sharing all the insights and look forward to staying in touch.

[17:47] Sophia Curnow: Thank you, lovely. Cheers.

[17:52] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone, and tell us. What you enjoyed most, take care and thanks for listening.