We compare the use of post-fire aerial imagery to ground-based assessment for identifying building destruction and damage at the 2012 Colorado Waldo Canyon Fire. We also compare active-fire defensive actions identified via manual and automated post-fire image classification to defensive actions documented from ground-based assessments (witness discussions, vehicle logs and images). For building destruction, manual and automatic image classification compared favourably to ground-based assessment, with low errors of commission (0.0-0.4%) and omission (0-1.2%). For building damage, classifying imagery manually had significant errors of commission and omission (59.0% and 57.9%) because ground-based assessments missed roof damage and image classification excluded interior and side damage, indicating the need for both techniques. Classifying imagery automatically for indicators of active-fire water suppression on buildings has Kappa statistics indicating a substantial agreement with documented water suppression. Manual and automatic image classification underestimated the full extent of documented defensive actions but showed a statistically significant dependence between fire cessation and defensive actions. These results show post-fire imagery to be a useful addition to other techniques for identifying building damage, destruction and defensive actions. Also demonstrated is the importance of accounting for defensive actions and other factors in wildland-urban interface fire studies.