While most Tathra residents are returning to unscathed homes, hundreds of others hit by the worst of the weekend bushfire face weeks of uncertainty camped on friends' couches, in family spare bedrooms or motel rooms.
As they wait to be allowed back on their gutted properties, a supposed turf war between rural and urban firefighters casts doubt on how emergency services handled the blaze.
The Rural Fire Service continued to open streets to residents on Wednesday, three days after a massive bushfire triggered an evacuation of the tourist village.
At latest count, 65 homes were destroyed along with 35 cabins and caravans.
A further 48 houses were damaged while 810 were saved or untouched by the blaze.
Many of those who lost their homes - along with the possessions and memories inside the walls - seem invincibly accepting of the loss.
"I went door to door knocking telling people to get out and, in the end, mine was the only house that went," one resident told AAP on Wednesday.
"All my elderly neighbours have been crying for me.
"Insurance will take care of most of it, and there's always someone worse off than you."
But those with homes unscathed by the fire are left to comprehend the randomness of the ember attacks which spared them but destroyed the houses of next door neighbours.
A day of cool and rainy weather allowed crews on the ground to get the blaze under control and begin "mopping up and blacking out" remaining hotspots, an RFS spokesman told AAP on Tuesday.
Hazmat teams spent the day spraying a pink PVA glue-type compound over razed properties to prevent dangerous asbestos fibres being stirred up by wind or future clearing work.
If forensic tests confirm the presence of asbestos the properties will be handed over to people through the council who will work with the Environmental Protection Agency, the RFS spokesman said.
But no timeline for the process has been established.
Until then the 166 people rehomed into temporary accommodation by Family and Community Services, and the hundreds of others staying with friends and family, can only wait.
Returning locals, including Joanne Coulton, who runs Esther Lodge holiday accommodation, hope one of the two inquiries launched in response to the bushfire will examine the mobile phone black spot which hangs over the town.
"It should be a kick in the bum for the government," Ms Coulton said, noting the lack of reception is now exposed as dangerous in emergencies.
Others say there should have been more hazard reduction burning in the dense national park around the town.
But the inquiry headed by ex-AFP boss Mick Keelty will focus on the call-taking and dispatch arrangements of the RFS and FRNSW amid union suggestions the two organisations are involved in an "ongoing turf war" that's "dysfunctional and dangerous".
The RFS declined assistance from the nearby Fire and Rescue brigade on Sunday because their urban tanker would have struggled in the hilly terrain.
"But when a wildfire is racing toward your town you want that type of tanker on the streets defending houses," one resident told AAP on Wednesday.
But little of it matters to eight-year-old Cooper Connelly, whose handwritten sign on Tathra's main street thanks the firefighting "heroes" who saved his home.
Share
