Eastern Australia is one of the most fire-prone regions of the world, with predominant eucalypt forests that have evolved to thrive on the phenomenon of bushfire.

[7] The subsequent Victorian Royal Commission investigation of the fires recorded that Victoria had not seen such dry conditions for more than two decades, and its rich plains lay "bare and baking; and the forest, from the foothills to the alpine heights, were tinder".

Five townships – Hill End, Narbethong, Nayook West, Noojee (apart from the Hotel), Woods Point – were completely destroyed and not all were rebuilt afterwards.

Sleepers of heavy durable timber, set in the soil, their upper surfaces flush with the ground, were burnt through... Where the fire was most intense the soil was burnt to such a depth that it may be many years before it shall have been restored..."An area of almost two million hectares (four point nine million acres) burned, 71 people killed, and whole townships wiped out, along with many sawmills and thousands of sheep, cattle and horses.

According to Forest Management Victoria, during the bushfires of 13 January 1939: "[F]lames leapt large distances, giant trees were blown out of the ground by fierce winds and large pieces of burning bark (embers) were carried for kilometres ahead of the main fire front, starting new fires in places that had not previously been affected by flames...

The alpine towns of Bright, Cudgewa and Corryong were also affected, as were vast areas in the west of the state, in particular Portland, the Otway Ranges and the Grampians.

Stretton's recommendations officially sanctioned and encouraged the common bush practice of controlled burning to minimise future risks.

[11] Victoria's forests were devastated to an extent that was unprecedented within living memory, and the impact of the 1939 bushfires dominated management thought and action for much of the next ten years.

[12] Salvage of fire-killed timber became an urgent and dominant task that was still consuming the resources and efforts of the Forests Commission a decade and a half later.

In fact, there was so much material that some of the logs were harvested and stockpiled in huge dumps in creek beds and covered with soil and treeferns to stop them from cracking, only to be recovered many years later.

[9] Prior to the creation of the CFA the Forests Commission had, to some extent, been supporting the individual volunteer brigades that had formed across rural Victoria in the preceding decades.

In mid-January, Sydney was ringed to the north, south and west by bushfires - from Palm Beach and Port Hacking to the Blue Mountains.

[6] Following the weekend of Black Friday, The Argus reported that on 15 January, fierce winds had also spread fire to almost every important area of New South Wales, burning in major fronts on Sydney's suburban fringes and hitting the south coast and inland: "hundreds of houses and thousands of head of stock and poultry were destroyed and thousands of acres of grazing land".

[13] On 16 January, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that disastrous fires were burning in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory as the climax to the terrible heatwave: Sydney faced record heat and was ringed to the north, south and west by bushfires from Palm Beach and Port Hacking to the Blue Mountains, with fires blazing at Castle Hill, Sylvania, Cronulla and French's Forest.

[4] Canberra was facing the "worst bushfires" it had experienced, with thousands of acres burned out and a 72-kilometre (45 mi) fire front was driven towards the city by a south westerly gale, destroying pine plantations and many homesteads, and threatening Mount Stromlo Observatory, Government House, and Black Mountain.

The deadly pattern continued with more major fires on Black Sunday on 14 February 1926 sees the tally rise to sixty lives being lost and widespread damage to farms, homes and forests.