When the danger isn't only at the fireground
Firefighters expect their work to expose them to danger. What may be less obvious is the psychological effect when the organisation itself becomes a source of stress, mistrust or perceived unfairness.
Recent reporting about photographs of Fire & Rescue NSW personnel attending a Freemasons ceremony in uniform has renewed longstanding concerns among some firefighters about informal networks, workplace culture and whether organisational processes are fair. Those concerns should not be confused with proof that Freemasonry improperly influences FRNSW decisions. But they raise an important psychological question. (The Daily Telegraph)
It is not a new question.
In 2009–10, allegations of assault, bullying and harassment within the then NSW Fire Brigades prompted a police strike force and an independent KPMG review. In 2017, FRNSW told a NSW parliamentary inquiry that substantial reforms had followed. Yet the subsequentparliamentary inquiry continued to examine bullying, harassment and discrimination within emergency services.
Research increasingly suggests that what happens inside emergency-service organisations can matter psychologically alongside what responders encounter on the job. Studies of firefighters have linked organisational stress, interpersonal conflict and concerns about fairness with depression, burnout, sleep problems and other adverse outcomes. Emerging research on moral injury adds another dimension: what happens when experiences at work collide with deeply held ideas about fairness, loyalty, integrity and who can be trusted? (OUP Academic)
The latest FRNSW controversy therefore raises a bigger issue than Freemasonry.
Firefighters are trained to enter dangerous environments. But what happens when they stop trusting the organisation standing behind them?
When Trust in the Organisation Breaks Down
Firefighters, fairness and the psychological injuries that don't begin at the fireground
A firefighter's occupational hazards are easy to picture. Burning buildings. Fatal accidents. Badly injured people. Children who cannot be saved. The accumulated memories of scenes most of us will never see.
It is therefore understandable that conversations about firefighters' mental health have traditionally concentrated on exposure to trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But another occupational hazard is much less visible.
It concerns what happens within the organisation itself: whether firefighters believe decisions are fair, whether they trust their leaders, whether complaints can safely be made, whether colleagues are treated consistently, and whether the values displayed on an organisation'swalls resemble what its members experience in practice.
That question has acquired renewed relevance in NSW.
Recent Daily Telegraph reporting has published photographs showing Fire & Rescue NSW personnel wearing official uniforms at a Freemasons ceremony and described concerns raised by firefighters about the influence of Freemasonry within the service. The reporting refers particularly to perceptions about informal influence, recruitment, promotion and disciplinary processes, and describes a longstanding firefighters' Masonic lodge. Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell subsequently reminded staff that FRNSW uniforms require approval when used outside sanctioned activities and emphasised the organisation's values of respect, integrity, service and courage. (The Daily Telegraph)
There is an important distinction here. Photographs of firefighters who are Freemasons do not establish that Freemasonry has improperly influenced recruitment, promotion, discipline or any other FRNSW decision. Allegations and perceptions of influence are not evidence that such influence occurred.
Psychologically, however, the controversy opens a broader and legitimate question: What happens to people working in high-risk occupations when they come to believe that the organisation on which they depend may not operate fairly?
That question turns out to have a history.
This conversation did not begin in 2026
In 2017, FRNSW made a detailed submission to a NSW Legislative Council inquiry examining bullying, harassment and discrimination in emergency-services agencies.
Its account shows just how long workplace culture had already been under scrutiny.
FRNSW reported that in 2009-10 it became aware of serious historical allegations of assault, bullying and harassment, some dating as far back as 1964. Reports involving 59 individuals contributed to the establishment of NSW Police Strike Force SIME, while FRNSW commissioned KPMG to review its workplace culture and its systems for managing workplace conduct.
The resulting 2010 KPMG review is important partly because its findings were more complicated than a simple story of a dysfunctional organisation. According to FRNSW's subsequent account, KPMG found no evidence of systemic bullying behaviour, but did find serious concerns among staff about real or perceived bullying associated with poor communication, inadequate leadership, performance issues and previous experiences of individual employees.
FRNSW responded with substantial institutional reform. It established what became the Professional Standards Branch, developed policies and procedures governing complaints and workplace conduct, introduced respectful-workplace training and later created a Diversity and Inclusion unit. Its Be Heard – Embedding Respectful Workplaces Strategy contained more than 30 actions, with training delivered to more than 70 work groups in the two years preceding its 2017 submission.
Yet the problems did not simply disappear. FRNSW reported that the 2012 People Matter Survey continued to identify concerns about bullying and harassment, leadership and communication. A later WorkCover review found strong systems, policies, processes and training, but concluded that these had not been fully embedded at local management levels.
That distinction - between having a policy and experiencing its protections - is psychologically important.
An organisation can have an exemplary complaints policy on paper while an employee remains convinced that making a complaint will damage their career. It can formally guarantee procedural fairness while an individual experiences a process as opaque or predetermined. It can repeatedly communicate organisational values while employees believe that informal relationships carry more weight.
Whether those beliefs are objectively correct in any particular case is a separate question. But perceptions of organisational fairness are not psychologically trivial.
Sometimes the organisation matters as much as the incident
A 2021 systematic review by Igboanugo and colleagues examined 29 studies of psychosocial stress among firefighters. The stressors identified included interpersonal conflict and concerns about organisational fairness. Across the literature, these workplace factors were associated with outcomes including depression and suicidality, other mental-health difficulties, burnout, problematic alcohol use, poorer sleep and even physiological and somatic outcomes. (OUP Academic)
One longitudinal study included in that literature followed 186 municipal firefighters. Firefighters reporting high levels of stress associated with the organisational system had an adjusted odds of later depressive symptoms about eight times that of firefighters reporting lower organisational-system stress, although the confidence interval was wide and the sample relatively small. The organisational factors being measured included perceptions of fairness, organisational support and whether career position and advancement appropriately reflected employees' abilities. (PubMed Central (PMC))
That finding should not be interpreted as meaning organisational unfairness causes depression eightfold in every fire service. It comes from one Korean cohort and cannot simply be transferred to FRNSW. But together with the broader systematic review, it challenges the assumption that the psychological burden of firefighting comes primarily from fires.
The station, hierarchy and organisation can matter too.
This is particularly significant because firefighters depend upon one another and upon their organisation in ways that are difficult to reproduce in an ordinary workplace. Trust is not merely desirable workplace culture. In an emergency service, reliance on colleagues, commanders, procedures and equipment is built into the work.
A firefighter may therefore have unusually powerful expectations about loyalty, competence, fairness and mutual protection.
When those expectations are violated - or are experienced as having been violated - the result can involve more than ordinary job dissatisfaction.
This is where moral injury enters the story
The term moral injury emerged largely from military research but is increasingly being examined among police, paramedics, firefighters and other emergency responders.
It is not currently a psychiatric diagnosis, and it should not become a fashionable label for every workplace grievance.
At its core, moral injury concerns the psychological consequences that can follow experiences which profoundly violate a person's moral beliefs or expectations. These may involve something the person did, something they failed to prevent, something they witnessed, or - importantly - betrayal by people or institutions on whom they believed they should have been able to rely.
A 2021 scoping review examined 32 studies relating to moral injury among police, firefighters and paramedics. Four recurring areas emerged: values, ethical decision-making, organisational betrayal and spirituality. The authors concluded that moral distress and injury among public-safety personnel may arise from disconnects between personal values, formal organisational values, informal organisational values, professional duties and expectations. They also stressed that the evidence base was still developing, particularly for firefighters. (PubMed Central (PMC))
That qualification matters.
We cannot look at current allegations concerning FRNSW and conclude that firefighters have sustained "moral injury." Nor can a news report diagnose an organisation or its employees.
But the concept provides a useful lens through which to understand why questions about fairness, loyalty and organisational integrity may become so emotionally charged.
Consider the difference between something bad happened to me and the people I trusted allowed this to happen.
Or between I didn't get the promotion and I no longer believe the system deciding promotions is fair.
Or between my complaint wasn't upheld and I no longer believe it was possible for my complaint to be heard impartially.
The second statement in each pair changes the meaning of the event. It concerns not simply loss, but trust.
Moral injury and PTSD are not the same thing
This distinction is also important clinically.
PTSD is associated with a defined constellation of symptoms following exposure to qualifying traumatic events: intrusive memories, avoidance, changes in mood and cognition, and heightened arousal and reactivity.
Moral injury can involve a somewhat different emotional landscape — guilt, shame, anger, disgust, disillusionment, loss of trust or a changed view of oneself, other people or institutions.
The two can nevertheless coexist.
A 2025 study of 283 firefighters, emergency medical personnel and dispatchers from nine US fire departments found that participants screening positive for probable PTSD also reported significantly greater overall moral-injury symptoms, including both shame-related and trust-violation dimensions. The differences had large effect sizes. (DOI)
Recent qualitative work with emergency responders similarly describes moral injury as involving not only difficult operational decisions and exposure to suffering, but an erosion of trust. Another 2026 study of first responders including firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians identified seven categories of potentially morally injurious experience, including witnessing suffering and concerns about failing to save or inadvertently harming people. (PubMed Central (PMC))
The research is young. It does not justify turning every experience of poor management, bullying or organisational conflict into a psychiatric injury.
What it does suggest is that clinicians treating first responders may need to ask questions beyond "What happened at the incident?"
Sometimes an equally important question is:
"What happened afterwards?"
And another may be:
"What did the organisation's response come to mean to you?"
When formal values and lived experience diverge
There is an intriguing detail in the present FRNSW story.
In its 2017 parliamentary submission, FRNSW identified its organisational values as respect, integrity, service and courage, closely aligned with NSW public-sector values of integrity, trust, service and accountability. It described those values as guiding every aspect of its work.
Nine years later, Commissioner Fewtrell invoked those same four values - respect, integrity, service and courage - in his communication to staff following the controversy surrounding the Freemasonry photographs. (The Daily Telegraph)
That does not demonstrate institutional failure. In fact, reiterating behavioural standards is precisely what organisational leadership might reasonably be expected to do.
But psychologically, values acquire their power through experience rather than publication.
People judge whether an organisation values integrity by what happens when integrity becomes inconvenient. They judge whether it values respect by how people are treated when they disagree. They judge whether there is accountability by what happens to powerful as well as powerless members of the organisation. And they judge whether a process is fair not simply by its written rules, but by their experience of how those rules operate.
This may help explain why perceptions of informal networks can be so corrosive, even when their actual influence is disputed.
If employees believe there is an "inside" and an "outside", the issue is no longer merely membership of a private organisation. It becomes a question about belonging, influence and procedural justice.
That is why the current controversy should not be reduced to the question, "Are Freemasons influencing Fire & Rescue NSW?"
There is presently insufficient publicly established evidence to answer that question affirmatively.
A more useful psychological question is:
"Do firefighters trust that the systems governing their working lives are fair - and what happens to them when they don't?"
An organisation can become part of the trauma story
FRNSW itself recognised in its 2017 submission that bullying and harassment adversely affect staff welfare. It described a substantial support structure including peer support, chaplaincy, an employee assistance program, mental-health first aid, an organisational psychologist, welfare support during investigations and mechanisms intended to protect employees against reprisals.
Those are important protections.
But mental-health support cannot entirely compensate for organisational conditions that generate distress. A counselling service can help a firefighter cope with an experience; it cannot retrospectively make an unfair process fair. Peer support can reduce isolation; it cannot restore institutional trust by itself.
Research among Canadian public-safety personnel provides some support for this distinction. Trust-violation-related moral injury was associated with lower perceived organisational support and greater alcohol use, while shame-related moral injury was associated with lower social support and self-compassion. (PubMed Central (PMC))
For psychologists working with firefighters and other first responders, this has practical implications.
A firefighter presenting with nightmares, irritability, withdrawal, hypervigilance or depression may certainly need assessment of traumatic exposure. But treatment may be incomplete if it ignores experiences of organisational conflict, disciplinary processes, bullying, perceived injustice, exclusion, failed complaints or loss of trust.
Conversely, therapy should not become an exercise in confirming every interpretation the client has formed about their organisation.
The clinical task is more difficult than that.
It involves understanding what happened, what is known and what remains uncertain; distinguishing traumatic threat from moral conflict and ordinary workplace grievance; examining guilt, shame, anger and betrayal where they are present; and helping the person determine what the experience has done to their beliefs about themselves, other people and institutions.
Sometimes the central psychological wound is fear.
Sometimes it is grief.
Sometimes it is shame.
And sometimes it is the conclusion:
"I thought they would have my back."
For a person whose working life has depended upon trust, that can be a profound loss.
The current controversy surrounding Fire & Rescue NSW may ultimately tell us little or a great deal about Freemasonry within the organisation. That is a matter for evidence, appropriate scrutiny and, where necessary, investigation.
But it already points towards a broader issue supported by psychological research.
Firefighters do not leave their values at the station door. They bring expectations of loyalty, fairness, integrity and service into the organisations to which they devote their careers.
We have become considerably better at recognising the psychological injuries that can follow what firefighters see and do.
We may also need to become better at recognising the injuries that can arise from what they come to believe about the organisation standing behind them.
References and further reading
Fire & Rescue NSW / NSW sources
Fire & Rescue NSW. (2017). Submission No. 78: Inquiry into Emergency Services Agencies. Legislative Council, Parliament of New South Wales. The submission documents FRNSW's account of historical allegations, the KPMG review, workplace reforms, complaints procedures and mental-health supports.
NSW Legislative Council, Portfolio Committee No. 4 – Legal Affairs. (2018). Emergency Services Agencies. Report No. 36. The inquiry examined the policy response to bullying, harassment and discrimination in NSW emergency-services agencies and discusses FRNSW and the earlier KPMG review. (Parliament of NSW)
Daily Telegraph. (2026). Freemason world inside Fire and Rescue NSW. Reporting concerning photographs of firefighters at a Masonic ceremony and allegations and perceptions about Freemasonry's influence within FRNSW. (The Daily Telegraph)
Daily Telegraph. (2026). FRNSW Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell issues statewide email after Freemasons photo revelation. Reporting on the Commissioner's subsequent communication concerning uniforms, conduct and FRNSW's organisational values. (The Daily Telegraph)
Peer-reviewed research
Igboanugo, S., Bigelow, P. L., & Mielke, J. G. (2021). Health outcomes of psychosocial stress within firefighters: A systematic review of the research landscape. Journal of Occupational Health, 63(1), e12219. The review included 29 studies and identified interpersonal conflict, organisational fairness and other psychosocial stressors in relation to multiple firefighter health outcomes. (OUP Academic)
An, S. J., Chung, Y. K., Kim, B. H., Kwak, K. M., Son, J. S., Koo, J. W., et al. (2015). The effect of organisational system on self-rated depression in a panel of male municipal firefighters. Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 27, 1. The longitudinal study followed 186 firefighters and found a strong association between organisational-system stress and subsequent depressive symptoms. (PubMed Central (PMC))
Lentz, L. M., Smith-MacDonald, L., Malloy, D., Carleton, R. N., & Brémault-Phillips, S. (2021). Compromised conscience: A scoping review of moral injury among firefighters, paramedics, and police officers. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 639781. The review included 32 studies and identified values, ethical decision-making, organisational betrayal and spirituality as major themes. (Frontiers)
Miller et al. (2025). Examining moral injury and posttraumatic stress among firefighters, emergency medical services personnel, and emergency dispatchers. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. The study examined 283 personnel from nine fire departments and found substantially greater moral-injury, shame and trust-violation scores among those screening positive for probable PTSD. (DOI)
In harm's way: Moral injury and the erosion of trust for emergency responders in the United Kingdom. (2025). European Journal of Psychotraumatology. The study examined emergency responders' understandings of morally injurious experiences and the role of trust. (Taylor & Francis Online)
“It haunts me still”: Exposure to potentially morally injurious events in first responders. (2026). SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, 9, 100674. This qualitative study included firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians and identified seven themes of potentially morally injurious experience. (ScienceDirect)