The small village of Balmoral, southwest of Sydney, has been all but wiped out by the Green Wattle Creek firestorm that roared through the area twice in three days.
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The community was already reeling after being hit on Thursday when the flames returned on Saturday during catastrophic fire conditions.
"We've got the devastating news there's not much left in the town of Balmoral," Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in nearby Picton on Sunday.
"Very sad to hear that. Many residents have had that news in the last little while. Communities like Buxton and others have also been very hard hit."
The premier said some residents would be allowed to return to their properties "today or tomorrow" but others could have to wait longer.
Assessment teams are going in to determine when it will be safe for people to go home.
"If people have lost their properties they still want to go back to see what's left and if there is anything they can salvage," Ms Berejiklian said.
"We know that's part of the recovery. We want people to have access to their land as soon as they can but it has to be safe."
Balmoral, in the Wingecarribee Shire Council area, consists of about 150 houses with a population of some 400 people.
Matthew Deeth - who's the mayor of the neighbouring Wollondilly Shire Council - says everyone knows everyone in the small village.
"They were all banding together until they got hit yesterday and they were just decimated," Mr Deeth told AAP on Sunday.
"Most people were pulled out of their houses and if there was nobody defending houses they kind of just all lit up."
Residents in the nearby town of Bargo, northeast of Balmoral, were counting themselves lucky on Sunday.
One house in Bargo's Ashby Close was lost to the Green Wattle Creek blaze, with fire damaging a number of other properties in the street.
Joe Cefai, 50, said the blaze just missed his home.
Mr Cefai, who evacuated with his two young children and a neighbour, lost a number of buildings next to his house.
"It could have been far worse," he told AAP on Sunday.
"I could have easily kissed my home goodbye.
"To return to see how close it did get, words can't explain."
The federal and state governments have extended emergency relief funding to the Wingecarribee and Wollondilly council areas.
NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons earlier said "dozens" of homes may have been lost when bushfires raged across NSW on Saturday.
Most of the losses were from the Green Wattle Creek fire, the huge Gospers Mountain blaze northwest of Sydney and the Currowan bushfire on the South Coast.
Volunteer RFS firefighters Geoffrey Keaton, 32, and Andrew O'Dwyer, 36, died on Thursday night when a tree fell into the path of their tanker in Buxton, north of Balmoral.
Australian Associated Press
