The Wood family home on the corner of Tathra and Bay streets, Tathra razed to the ground in the bushfires. Credit:Karleen Minney While fortune had put all of his family safe and outside town at the weekend, it meant they couldn't defend the property from fire as it pushed into the town and destroyed homes. Indi said the family was in shock and that the loss would not sink in until one of them could see the remains themselves. "We always thought it would be a real shock for the fire to come through Tathra or around the coast to Tathra and hit that tea tree," he said. He and his mother went into the cinema trying to escape the heat when fires were reported at Tarraganda, about 20km from Tathra. When they emerged, Indi's phone was full of messages asking if his family was safe while a neighbour told him the house was gone.

Homes destroyed by fire in Tathra. Credit:Karleen Minney "The biggest thing for me has been most of us have been unable to stand in front of it and weigh up the situation, and take it in," he said. "It's not going to have full impact until we see it." Rob White stayed with the Tathra Beach House Apartments during the recent fires and helped fight off flames that may have destroyed the resort. Credit:karleen minney The bushfire destroyed at least 70 homes in Tathra. South coast residents reported poor mobile reception, long a problem in the area, had frustrated communication during the fire.

Jeanette Atkins had a nervous wait on Monday for news about her Tathra home, and said she received no warnings on her mobile phone before the fire struck the town. Tess Brunton, right, spent hours trying to contact her father Paul, left, when he disappeared as fires raged in Tathra. Credit:Justice NSW "I just got home from work at 4pm, took one look at the wind-infused smoke and just grabbed bare essentials," she said. She drove further down the Bega River and eventually stayed at a house between Tathra and Bega. Bega Court registrar John Chalker (left) and court officer Paul McGrath (right) went to work on Monday unsure if their homes were still standing. Credit:Justice NSW

Another Tathra family spent several hours desperately trying to track down a man who was missing after checking on elderly neighbours as "flames higher than the trees" closed in on properties on Sunday afternoon. Paul Brunton, 59, said he stayed behind to help the couple in their 90s evacuate, having been "blissfully unaware" there was anybody in the house before the couple's daughter had asked for his help minutes earlier. Mr Brunton had just walked out of their house when he spotted a tree on fire in front of another neighbour's home. "It was bloody good timing really. [The neighbour] was out the back of his place, so I managed to get it out," he said. Meanwhile, in a reserve about 50 metres from the back of Mr Brunton's property, flames were leaping higher than eight- to 10-metre trees.

"You could feel the heat and there was an incredible wind blowing at the time," he said. Mr Brunton decided it was time to evacuate and left for Kianinny Bay, before returning home later in the day and helping fight spot fires. With the power out and no mobile phone, he was unable to contact his worried family until about 10pm, by which time a Facebook post calling for information on his whereabouts had been shared more than 600 times. Mr Brunton's daughter Tess, who wrote the Facebook post and now lives in Tasmania, said the hours she spent trying to locate her father were harrowing. She said the family was "ecstatic" when Paul emailed her to say he and the family home had escaped the blaze unharmed.

"It's the unknown that's the scariest," Ms Brunton said. "We had heard hearsay about all our relatives, but Dad was the one person we couldn't account for." Tathra Beach House Apartments owner Rob White expected to lose his business as smoke poured into the town in the space of 10 minutes, forcing him to evacuate up to 50 guests from his buildings at 3pm. A wind change may have saved the apartments as he extinguished spot fires, Mr White said. Houses behind the business, bordering on bushland, were less fortunate. On Monday morning, the beach house apartments had no broadband and parts of the property had no power.

Residents have banded together in the aftermath of the fires, with John Chalker, who went to work on Monday unsure whether he had lost his home, praising Tathra's resilience. Mr Chalker said he checked into a motel in Merimbula after being told to evacuate his home in Edna Drive, and went to work at Bega Courthouse on Monday in the clothes he'd been wearing the previous day. It wasn't until about 10.30am that a friend called to say Mr Chalker's house was still standing. "There was no point sitting around in a motel room, so I went to work," he said. "We're a pretty resilient community and I had to do something with the day."

Loading A Telstra mobile base station two kilometres from Tathra's centre was damaged during the fire and lost power at 2pm on Sunday, but the telco said its services were restored through a generator that returned electricity to the tower on Monday. Use of Telstra public payphones in Tathra, Tanja, Bermagui and Bega will be free in the aftermath of the fire, as will Telstra Air payphone hotspots in affected parts of the district.