Episode 312: From Close Call to Safer Fireground Operations with Matt Simmonds

Episode notes

What starts as a routine task on the fireground can quickly turn into a life threatening moment. For Matt Simmonds, that moment came while rolling hose after a fire, when a passing vehicle nearly struck his crew.

That close call sparked a question that many firefighters have quietly accepted for years. Is this really the safest way to do this job, or is there a better way?

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, Matt Simmonds , co-founder of Operational Fire and a full time firefighter, shares the story behind building a tool designed to improve safety, reduce physical strain, and protect long term health. What began as a makeshift setup using a child’s bike evolved into a purpose built solution shaped by real operational experience.

In this conversation, Matt breaks down the risks firefighters face during post incident cleanup, including back injuries and hidden exposure to harmful contaminants. He also explains how thoughtful design can reduce those risks while improving efficiency on scene.

It is a grounded look at how small changes on the fireground can have lasting impact on safety, longevity, and the ability to keep serving the community.

So take a listen to hear what he 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. 1:33 The close call that started it
3. 2:07 From a kid's bike to a design
4. 3:55 Back injuries and manual handling
5. 4:56 Carcinogens on hose
6. 5:48 Rolling hose like reeling in a fish
7. 7:08 Think beyond the fire
8. 9:05 Words to live by

Questions answered in this episode

How did Operational Fire get started?

Matt Simmonds and his partner were rolling hose by hand with their heads down after a fire when a car drove through the scene and almost hit them. They talked it over at the station and decided to find a better way to do the job.

Hear it at 1:04

What design requirements did they set for the hose roller?

It had to be operated by one person with good manual handling and no bending over. It also had to be lightweight, collapsible, and able to roll every style and size of hose without needing special storage.

Hear it at 2:44

Why is avoiding bending over important for firefighters?

Matt Simmonds says back injuries are the biggest injury type in firefighting, responsible for about 49 percent of firefighter injuries and the leading cause of early retirement. Often it is not a single incident but a buildup of small strains over time.

Hear it at 4:02

How does the Safe Roll help reduce carcinogen exposure?

Hose dragged through a fire picks up contaminants. The Safe Roll keeps those contaminants on the ground away from the operator, drains the hose as it rolls, and prevents firefighters from touching dirty hose or getting drips on their shoulders.

Hear it at 5:48

What is Matt Simmonds' advice on reducing carcinogen exposure without buying equipment?

Put gloves on when packing up hose and think beyond the fire. The hard work is done, but just do that extra bit of care for yourself and your crew so you do not bring contaminants back into the firehouse.

Hear it at 7:20

Transcript

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

Ep 312 transcript

From Close Call to Safer Fireground Operations with Matt Simmonds

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Matt Simmonds

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 into 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 the field to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration, these episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. All right, well, what a pleasure it is to be sitting alongside Matt Simmonds with Operational Fire. How are you doing?

[0:52] Matt Simmonds: Not too bad, thank you for inviting me to come along to your podcast, Kevin. Much appreciated.

[0:56] Kevin Sofen: Of course. So I love the name, Operational Fire, just calling the spade a spade.

[1:01] Matt Simmonds: That's what we try to do, yeah.

[1:03] Kevin Sofen: What is Operational Fire?

[1:04] Matt Simmonds: So Operational Fire was created by me and my business partner, we're both full-time operational firefighters and we still are today. The story to our company started one night where we were rolling up hose in our gear after a couple of air sets, they'd worked hard, our heads were down doing the classic sort of rolling that we do by hand, the cars decided to drive through our scene and we almost got hit by the car. So we sort of stopped and had to think about it back at the station. We said, is this now a three person job where someone has to be standing there watching the guys right up the hose to make sure there's no hazards or is there a better way of doing it? So we started to research it and there was just nothing that did what we wanted as firefighters from a ground level in one device, so that started the journey, which was four years sort of R&D and we started by buying a kid's bike and having a piece of wood and two sort of prongs and chopping it up to get the chain out and trying to learn how to roll hose and then we slowly evolved through there to get to where we are today.

[2:07] Kevin Sofen: That's amazing and I mean you mentioned again is this now a three-person job and oftentimes firefighters are asked to do kind of everything with very little resources so again did what the cost would be to do this safely with a third person, could you do it? Yes. Does it make sense?

[2:23] Matt Simmonds: No.

[2:25] Kevin Sofen: Okay. So then you started with, let's all tack together some wood, let's draw some designs on a napkin, let's use a bike. How did this lead to a design and what was the kind of the, what were like the must of this design and kind of for people listening, sort of paint the picture on what this design looks like now.

[2:44] Matt Simmonds: Absolutely. So we started off very early on thinking from a fire service perspective on why would a fire service say no to a piece of equipment. So we basically had a whiteboard and we just started listing the things that this, whatever it was that we created, it had to do so it had to be able to be operated by one person, good manual handling at all times, no bending over. It had to be lightweight, collapsible. It had to be able to roll every single style of hose. So your Dutch or your donut on coupling rolls, double donuts, the one device had to do it all, but it also had to do different sizes of hose as well. So that led us on a very long journey understanding because rolling hose and different methods requires little, you know, bits and pieces that are a little bit nuances, I guess you'd say, and to have that just in one device that's, you know, lightweight, collapsible and doesn't require speciality storage. So the idea is that it can basically go anywhere on the fire truck and it can be used with very little training, very easily on the fire ground and work every time. That's the most important thing.

[3:45] Kevin Sofen: And so a couple things that ultimately tie into firefighter safety, firefighter wellness and just better operations, more improved operational fire operations. Let's talk about the not bending over and kind of what that means for your back and just kind of the general day-to-day. Why is that so important?

[4:02] Matt Simmonds: Yeah, so I'm not sure if people are aware, but in terms of firefighting, the biggest injury we have are back injuries. It's a responsible thing for about 49% of injuries to firefighters, and this is worldwide. and then that also is the highest leading cause of retirement, early retirement due to injury, is a back injury. So often it's not a single incident that does your back in, it's you know you might go to lift up a weight or lift a plate cover and you do your back and you think oh geez that was what did it but it's the build up to that, it's the old, the final straw that breaks the camel's back as it was. So we looked at the manual handling of rolling hose and it's terrible, it's like there is no good manual handling way to roll up hose by hand. So with our device, you're upright, you're standing upright, you have good situational awareness, you don't have to watch the hose anymore, the device will do all the work, it will police it, pull it in, tighten as you roll, it will underrun all of your lines as well, so drain out your hose as you go. And so we're not only talking about backs, which is where, when you hurt your back, you know about it at the time. And it's very much in your mind, I've hurt my back, I'll go get treatment, I'll go do this. One thing we're really not, and this is worldwide, what we're not aware of is the carcinogenic load on hose. So you drag a hose through a fire, burnt ground, it's picking up a huge contaminant load. And then the fire goes out, everyone takes off the gear and you sort of think the job's over and then everyone's there touching the hose, underrunning, draining the hose, putting it over your shoulder, like in our station, you see all the black marks on the shoulder from all the stuff that's dripping down onto you, the Safe Roll will do all that. It keeps all the nasties away from the operator on the ground where it belongs. So we've really tried to attack this thing from a holistic sort of point of view where it's not just backs, it's 10, 15 years in the future. Hopefully we can prevent a bit of cancer as well.

[5:48] Kevin Sofen: So I'm also, I'm a fisherman, and I was watching the kind of the whole design. It almost looks like once you set it up and once you cook it up, you're basically just kind of reeling in like you got fish on the line.

[5:58] Matt Simmonds: Exactly right, it's perfect analogy. It's literally as easy as that. It's not even a heavy fish. So the demonstrations we're doing here, We use two fingers and we literally just roll up a 65 mil hose. So I think that's two and a half inch, the Americans, just with two fingers, just showing you how.

[6:13] Kevin Sofen: Thank you for the conversion.

[6:14] Matt Simmonds: Yeah, that's right. We had to do this for FDIC, work out all the conversions and lengths and puts and things. But, yeah, we want to make sure that it can be used by all ages. So my business partner, his daughter is 10 years old and she can roll up two and a half inch hose by herself. We go out to volunteer organizations where, you know, some of the average ages of the average age is about 70 to 75, and yet they're now able to roll up hose and that was a real sort of, it was validation for what we're doing, seeing in them as well, where they had sort of stepped back from being able to be a volunteer because they didn't feel like they could contribute. And some of the best feedback we've had is that, oh, I can now help the guys roll up hose back at station. I can still be part of that community. So that was really important to us as well.

[6:57] Kevin Sofen: I think that's a big part of what, why this exists and that it's a, it's a simple tool that's helping produce the burden on your back. It's giving you awareness to where you're not going to have to, you know, have your head down and you can look to see if there's a car coming. And one of the biggest things of not having to have unnecessary exposure to some of these carcinogens, so where again, we may think that, oh, this scene is done, but there's, everything is still in that hose.

[7:20] Matt Simmonds: It is, absolutely. And it's at the moment, it's this real innocuous exposure. So we're really trying to bring awareness and this is what we're really pushing for worldwide. It's just like you don't have to buy a safe role just but when you're packing up like put some gloves on just think beyond the fire think beyond that the you've done the work you've done the hard work now just do that little bit of extra care for yourself and your crew and when you go back to station you're not bring it back into the firehouse and then bring it through all your gear we really want to try and look after the guys but then it's like again it's from a community point of view is it's a one-person job now so as other people are restoring the truck, redoing your air sets, getting their gear clean, the driver, for example, the pump operator can pack up all the lines by himself. So that resource is now back on the road quicker. So we're also enabling that resource back to the community quicker as well. So it's improving that community service as well.

[8:13] Kevin Sofen: Brilliant. And so now, I mean, the product that seems fully ready for market.

[8:18] Matt Simmonds: Yes, yeah, we're finally there.

[8:21] Kevin Sofen: So yeah, what's the near medium future look like And how can people from around the world get in touch?

[8:26] Matt Simmonds: Yeah, absolutely. So reach out to us. We have a YouTube channel, Operational Fire shows you what we're doing with the roller and what it can do, just how off-road you can take it for those bushfire brigades and people that work in rough terrain. It's a little mountain goat of a system where it will roll over anything. We're just sort of just coming into America now. We'll be working with Dali as a partner in America. Or you can reach out to us at operationalfireatoutlook.com. Send us an email. If you need any information, and we have a website as well, www.operationalfire.com and it shows a bit more of what's happening. So yeah, if you want any information, please reach out. If you have any questions, please reach out.

[9:05] Kevin Sofen: And final thing is just kind of curious within your entrepreneurial journey with you and Lando and everything that you've done to continue to get the product orders now, is there any quote or sort of life lesson or that has kind of like stuck with you as you've kind of continued to persevere through the iterations and the challenges? and now where you're at today?

[9:24] Matt Simmonds: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the biggest thing is don't give up. You're going to face challenges, you're going to face failure in life. I think the biggest thing is to never give up. It doesn't matter what it is, whether, you know, like we've lost firefighters to cancer, like just put the fight in there and keep going. From an entrepreneurial side of things, it was the same thing. We met failure and some spectacular fails in our time. But if you just don't give up any, if you persevere, then the light at the end of the tunnel always there to get to so yeah

[9:53] Kevin Sofen: right on that well excited to see where this continues to go around the world particularly the alignment with now w starling company in america and excited to continue to collaborate.

[10:01] Matt Simmonds: Yeah, thank you very much. Kevin, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

[10:04] Kevin Sofen: Cheers, mate.

[10:04] Matt Simmonds: Thank you.

[10:05] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. If you found 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.