In a submission on behalf of the Snowy Valleys Council Ag Recovery Group to the Royal Commission into the summer fires, Cr Julia Ham called for greater surveillance of fire-risk areas to detect ignitions sooner and ultimately reduce their severity.

The Dunns Road fire, which destroyed over 100 homes and public buildings and burned over 330,000 hectares, was started by a lightning strike south of Tarcutta.

Cr Ham said her husband was one of multiple people who reported the fire after spotting it at around midday on December 28.

However, it was likely the lightning strike occurred on December 27, at least 12 hours before the RFS were able to respond.

She said the fire began at Takejo, a rocky, inaccessible area known for its lightning strikes.

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While smoke coming from a fire at Takejo would usually be visible from nearby properties on a clear day, the thick haze drifting from the Canberra fires that blanketed much of the country in late December obscured the first signs of the blaze.

"What's smoke when there's already smoke?" Cr Ham said.

She said the delay in spotting the fire had an "enormous impact" on what it became, with the fire going on to burn for 50 days.

"The sooner you get to the fire, the sooner you get it put out," she said.

"The longer that it had just to fester away, the more ground it was covering."

She said since the fire there had been many discussions in the community as to how to avoid a similar situation occurring again, with smoke haze playing an unprecedented role in hindering fire response across the 2019-2020 season.

Some are advocating for a manned tower at Takejo which would allow deliberate monitoring of the high-risk area during conditions where lightning poses a fire risk.

Cr Ham said she had also been made aware of a variety of technologies that could use artificial intelligence to detect heat and report possible fires in situations where there may otherwise be visibility issues or other opportunities for human error.

"The technology for artificial intelligence to pick up the smoke and fires, I think that is the way we need to go," she said.

"The technology is all there, we just need to put it in the right places."

"If we had had a tower at Takejo and if we had had it manned or artificial intelligence to pick up hotspots, (Dunns Road) would not have got away."