In a submission to the NSW Bushfire Inquiry, Snowy Valleys Council has called for widespread changes to the way bushfires - and their aftermath - are handled.

According to the submission, entire towns were isolated due to both impacts on the road network and active fire. Batlow, Tumbarumba, Talbingo and Khancoban, along with the villages of Tooma and Jingellic, were cut off from the rest of the region as fires destroyed access roads for supplies and essential goods.

The summer bushfires also hit the Snowy Valleys Road network, with the Snowy Mountains Highway closed, along with substantial arterial routes like the Batlow and Jingellic roads and a number of smaller local ones.

The massives blazes made the isolation worse because communication was affected.

According to the submission, Snowy Valleys has significant issues with mobile phone and internet coverage, particularly in rural village and remote farms.

During the fires, radio black spots meant reception was poor or non-existent in some areas.

"The risk that residents were not given sufficient information or notice to enact their fire protection plans was high," the submission reads.

The issues with mobile and internet coverage did not only affect residents, but also emergency services personnel. Pre-existing problems were exacerbated by fire damage to communications infrastructure.

"This hindered firefighting efforts as it required resources of manpower to sit at high points and act as relays to communicate between field teams and sector support. This reduced the number of resources that could be used on the fire line," according to the submission.

The council has made a slew of recommendations on the issue of telecommunications, most based around upgrades and improving reception.

Christine Webb, the secretary of the Tumut Community Association - which also made a submission to the inquiry - described periods when communities were cut off by road and radios were not working, while fire fronts were still advancing, as extremely scary.

"Some people around here did pack and left for Wagga or Gundagai," she said.

"There was no electricity, no radio. Everything went out. You were just trying to be prepared. But there were elderly people who were particularly worried and frightened. They don't use Facebook, they don't have the internet and when the phones and the radio is out, they just didn't know what was going on.

"What we have asked for is some kind of warning system."

The Dunns Road fire, Snowy Valleys Council said, began within a private plantation at Ellerslie.

During the fires, the softwood industry lost 42,500 hectares of both public and privately owned plantations, at an estimated loss of $425 million.

According to the Snowy Valley's submission, weed growth within the plantations contributed a "significant fuel source that exacerbated the intensity and spread" of the summer bushfires.

"There exists considerable concern from adjoining property owners as to the ongoing fire management planning of plantations," it reads.

One of the council's recommendations to the bushfire inquiry is for the establishment and maintenance of fuel-reduced areas and "substantial firebreak buffers" near plantations.