A lakeside scrub fire shot "huge, big fireballs" into the sky before it was brought under control near Wanaka this evening.
Firefighters and two choppers battled the blaze, which at one stage measured about 500m x 500m, in the north-west end of Dublin Bay Rd.
The fire was near the property of celebrity cook Annabel Langbein.
Langbein said the fire was across the bay from her house, and she could see "huge, big fireballs".
"It's really scary, actually, they've evacuated everybody," she said.
On her side of the bay she had not been evacuated, but was concerned windy conditions could spell doom for her neighbours' houses.
A Fire Service shift manager said the fire started before 6pm, was about 500m wide.
"We believe two houses may have been evacuated as a precaution," he said.
Just before 7pm a fire service spokesman said the fire had been extinguished and crews were damping down hotspots.
Langbein said there had been a huge fire in the area in 1999 which "took out the whole peninsula".
"That was just terrifying," she said.
"Whole trees exploding."
Today's fire was about a five minute walk away from her house, but only about 200m if she were to swim across the bay.
She thought perhaps some of the fireballs had disappeared even as she watched teams fight the flames.
Erin Bowman said she had been out on Lake Wanaka wakeboarding when she and her family saw the smoke about 1km away.
"We saw the big, red flare up and we though 's***, that doesn't look good.'"
They headed over to where the fire had started down on the beach and called 111, then watched as helicopters gathered water in their monsoon buckets.
"The smoke looks like it's subsided," Bowman said.
When the fire was larger, she could see it near some houses.
"The way the wind was, it was quite fortunate that they weren't affected."
Bowman praised the chopper pilots for their work.
"Amazing, those people," she said.
The area is often populated with freedom campers, Langbein said.
- additional reporting NZ Herald
