The fire, understood to have been caused by a failure in electrical infrastructure,[4][5] began in the locality of Reedy Swamp, near Tarraganda, which spread east towards Tathra in the municipality of the Bega Valley Shire.

[15] On 26 March 2018 Berejiklian and Constance announced that up to $10 million was available to remove asbestos-contaminated material and to help residents to clean up their properties; with the clean-up operation coordinated by NSW Public Works in conjunction with insurers and the Bega Valley Shire Council.

[25] The NSW Rural Fire Service Association which represents the Volunteers and Staff undertook a comprehensive consultation process with its members and provided considerable information.

[26] Both the Fire Brigade Employees Union and former Commissioner Keelty emphasised prior to and following the report, that it would not be a criticism of the action of volunteers, but rather an investigation into the overall co-ordination of emergency incidents in NSW.

These included: the fact "some policies were not followed on the day"; a deputy incident controller was not appointed; there were delays in feeding information back to the FRNSW ComCen who were on the line to numerous 000 callers seeking assistance; the 'Fires Near Me' app was not regularly updated; an emergency alert was issued too late; ABC radio continued normal broadcasts on the day of the fires rather than broadcasting emergency updates; there were discrepancies in the number of resources attached to the fire between agencies; the RFS were limited to communications by radio with no real time vehicle locators; and that the 000 call taking system was "cumbersome" among other issues.

[11] Keelty made a number of recommendations, including the abolition of fire district boundaries between the two agencies, the establishment of an independent centralised 000 call taking system to replace the FRNSW call centre, the roll-out of automatic vehicle locators across the RFS fleet, a review of the effectiveness of emergency public information arrangements and that both services take steps to continue to building a strong mutual respect based relationship with one another, particularly in management areas.