The lost homes were confirmed late Wednesday during a visit to the area by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, NSW Premier Chris Minns and RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers.

Commissioner Rogers said there was still a lot more work to be done by impact assessment teams in coming days, but three homes had burnt in the blaze that started on Coolagolite Road and had now spread over more than 5200 hectares.

"There's a lot of work to get to a final number...it could've been so much worse," he said.

Mr Albanese said it was only last week he spoke at a national disaster preparedness summit in Canberra "to plan and to prepare for what we knew would be a very difficult time".

"But just one week later is very soon," he added.

The PM said Wednesday's visit to the Emergency Operations Centre in Bega was not just an opportunity to be briefed on the ongoing fire situation, but also to say thank you to all the men and women providing the support services.

"This must be an incredibly traumatic experience. We can smell, we can see the impact these fires are having," he said.

"That would be having a triggering response for people who went through such a traumatic time during the summer of 2019-20.

READ ALSO: 'Horrendous': South Coast bushfire a trigger for Black Summer survivors

"Many of the people I met during that period who were providing the support and services, I've met again. They're back, doing what they always do helping their fellow Australians.

"It seems to me there's something consistent about the Australian character.

READ ALSO: Holidaying family bunkers down amid emergency level fire

"At the worst of times we see the best of the Australian character. We see people digging deep and in some cases putting their own safety on the line.

"They are people not putting themselves first, but putting their communities first."

Commissioner Rogers also praised the community's response to the emergency warnings.

"On behalf of the RFS and the multi agency approach I want to thank very much the community

"Indications are the community listened to the warnings that we put out as early as we possibly could

"And door knocking showed that a lot of people had heeded those warnings.

"For those people who saw the footage of this fire, saw how quickly it travelled - it travelled 15km in a few hours - they saw how terrifyingly deadly this fire was.

"If we get out this with no person injured - or worse - it's been a job well done by all the agencies working together."

READ ALSO: 'We didn't know what to do': How it felt as South Coast bushfire raged towards homes

Commissioner Rogers said concerns about this fire season have been known and communicated for some time.

"We said from the very beginning our concerns for this fire season, about how dry it's been and in this particular region experiencing drought conditions.

"We're one month into spring so obviously we won't be complacent from this point on. The fire season is absolutely here and we need to take it seriously."

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