The Royal Commission has heard how mobile phone apps designed to inform people of the bushfire threat failed over summer when they did not acknowledge when firefronts regularly jumped across the state border.
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Neither the NSW or Victorian-based apps showed fire activity in the other state, despite the threat to border communities.
Snowy Valleys Council chief executive Matthew Hyde told the National Natural Disaster Arrangements Royal Commission about the problem at Tuesday's hearing.
"There were significant issues with the movement across the border and the maintenance of apps so the community were not aware of the coming threat of the fire and the need to prepare and maintain safety for themselves and their family," he said.
"The fire did move backwards and forward across the boundary and we did feel that it could have an improved management practice had we had a liaison officer across both those management sectors."
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A "flying squad" of bushfire experts who could be sent to councils with low staff numbers to help in the case of emergency was also proposed by Towong Council chief executive Juliana Phelps, who told the Royal Commission it would have helped this summer.
"We are absolutely stretched between our business as usual responsibilities as well as emergency management ... Within 72 hours we were efficiently exhausted," she said.
"The expectation is to go on offering services such as collecting rubbish and opening the municipal offices in Corryong, but the reality is our staff were actually experiencing exactly what the community were experiencing.
"They are no different, they are members of the community."
Towong had 22 per cent of staff who were personally impacted by the bushfire, including one person whose home burnt down.
"We're dealing with a number of issues now in terms of people's health and wellbeing. Some staff have not been able to continue on the journey with us and there are some mental health issues that we're dealing with," Ms Phelps said.
"It's had a profound impact on this organisation."
She also told commissioners how power, landline and mobile phone reception went down during the summer fires, "which created quite a number of issues for us getting messages to the communities and getting them to understand what the threat to them was at that point in time".
"The Upper Murray was without power for a number of days until we were able to have large generators moved into the region," she said.
"The town of Corryong was operated by generators for quite a number of days."
The Royal Commission will continue looking at cross-border issues on Wednesday.
