[4] The fire resulted in 780 square kilometres (301 sq mi) of land being burnt, the loss of nine lives, injury to another 115 people, and huge property damage.

[6] The bushfire began not long after 3 pm in roadside vegetation on Lady Franklyn Road north of the town of Wangary, approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) north-west of Port Lincoln.

[10][3][11] Maximum temperatures on Tuesday 11 January were recorded as 36.7 °C (98.1 °F) at Coles Point and 38.2 °C (100.8 °F) at Port Lincoln; winds gusted to 83 kilometres per hour (52 mph).

[12] During the course of the morning and early afternoon, fire proceeded across the landscape of the Lower Eyre Peninsula in an easterly direction, carried in the main by wheat-stubble fuels.

[13] The worst affected areas were Wangary, North Shields, Wanilla, Poonindie, Louth Bay, Whites Flat, Koppio, Greenpatch and Warunda.

Personal hardship and distress grants were provided as a priority, including a State Government grant of $10,000 to all farmers affected by the fire to assist with immediate needs; Centrelink payments were prioritised; a hotline service was set up on 12 January, receiving more than 2900 calls in 15 weeks; and extensive measures such as providing shipping containers for storage of salvaged possession were speedily put in place.

[18] Ten years later, on Sunday 11 January 2015, about 200 people packed into the Marble Range Football Club, Wangary, for a 10th anniversary memorial service.

State member of parliament for the region, Peter Treloar, who in 2005 was a farmer, said "Many people's lives changed for ever that day"; but he said he understood that not all wanted to be involved in the commemoration.

Among people who had been in the fire who spoke with reporters from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was Lorna Harding, aged 91, who was among those who took refuge in the sea off North Shields.

"[2] Between 5 October 2005 and 8 May 2007, South Australia's Deputy State Coroner conducted a coronial inquest that examined a large range of factors connected with the bushfire, taking evidence from 140 witnesses.

In his 703-page report released on 18 December 2007, the coroner made 34 wide-ranging recommendations for minimising future bushfire risks,[19] to which the South Australian Government subsequently responded.

There are those critical of the coronial process, arguing it does little to prevent a future bushfire ... civil action is likely to be launched immediately against the CFS and the owner of the vehicle which started the fire by 70 litigants, mostly farmers.

"[4] A great deal of evidence was given to the inquest about the crucial question of the firefighting and fire suppression strategies that could and/or should have been adopted on the Monday night and the Tuesday morning, but were not.

[citation needed] The Deputy State Coroner had referred in the coronial report to the "very strident" public criticism of volunteer Incident Management Teams that had occurred.