Jo Dodds says her home near Tathra was threatened on three sides by Sunday's fires, as she watched black plumes of smoke rising from houses of friends and heard gas bottles exploding one after another.

But what angered Ms Dodds on Tuesday was to hear Malcolm Turnbull's comments a day earlier at an evacuation hall that the fire had nothing to do with climate change.

"I'm furious because [the Prime Minister] is not a clown," Ms Dodds, an independent councillor for Bega Valley Shire, told Fairfax Media. "What is the debate?"

Tathra has long been a focus of climate change and renewable energy support, as seen in this beach sign with 3000 people in 2006.

Ms Dodds said she watched "the monster bearing down on me ... wondering if my friends are dying, knowing that the reason why all of that is happening in front of my very eyes, is because of climate change.