Terrified families bundled into cars in the dead of night then fled for their lives as massive flames closed in on their homes.
Hundreds of people were evacuated after a blaze, which on Sunday stretched for 1600 hectares, gave Lake Ohau Village residents just minutes to get up and out of the idyllic lakeside Waitaki District town.
Many were last night being put up in motels and some people who own holiday homes were likely still unaware if their property was one of the few to survive the devastation.
Civil Defence scrambled to supply basic essentials for the 112 registered with the evacuation centre in Twizel, while offers of accommodation flooded in from locals.
But the strong winds that have fanned the fire are set to intensify today, so there is likely to be little reprieve for exhausted firefighters until tomorrow, according to the MetService.
Hugh Spiers, owner of the Barn at Killin B&B, which had been destroyed, said the scene was "like the movies".
"It was really, really scary. The flames were big and smokey, thick with heat; there was no time to even take a photo," Spiers said.
"We couldn't get out our normal way, we had to cross country through a fire break."
Janet Brown only had time to grab her kids and flee after hearing an alarm going off.
"Our bedroom windows look straight out towards the fire and it was our neighbour's house on fire. It was coming at us pretty fast, and we had a house full of kids," she told Stuff.
"Luckily we were catching a flight today so we had our bags packed and we just jumped in the cars and left the house."
Another affected resident, who didn't want to be named, said his family were "shattered" and staying in a motel last night, keen to get much-needed rest.
"We're pretty tired, I can tell you, we've been up since just after 2am and it's been a long, pretty stressful day, and to see your house burn down is not very nice.
"But we're out and we've got no injuries."
David Stone was left with just the clothes he was wearing after his Huxley Tce home was destroyed.
He'd driven around the town and estimated only 15 of about 70 houses in the village were still standing.
Fire and Emergency incident controller Graeme Still flew over the fire ground on Sunday and confirmed "at least" 20 houses had been damaged or destroyed.
He said the Lake Ohau village looked "like a war zone".
"I've got to be honest, it's not looking good," he said."There's just structures totalled to the ground. It's black, it's awful. Quite a bit of it is razed."
Eleven helicopters were at the scene yesterday afternoon, along with seven fire crews.
Support was being provided for evacuated residents, who were jolted awake shortly after 3am by an evacuation siren sounding, Still said.
"People are very uncertain, they don't know which of their properties has been compromised, it's quite sad."
The blaze was one of four large fires across the country, three of which were in the South Island.
A large forest fire also broke out in the settlement of Livingstone, about 30km northwest of Oamaru about 3.15am, forcing residents to evacuate their homes.
Sixteen crews, including a command team from Dunedin, fought to bring that blaze under control. There was also a bush fire just off Abel Tasman Drive in Ligar Bay, about 130km north of Nelson.
Far North firefighters also battled a fire that burned more than 10ha near Ahipara from midday. Three houses nearby were evacuated.
Meanwhile back in Ohau, Dunedin resident Andy Winneke saw the "dramatic" fire when he woke about 4am from where he was camping with his family across from Lake Ohau.
They had camped at Round Hill, about 5km across the lake and north of the township, but got little sleep because of high winds, gusting more than 100km/h.
He had to get up to rope down the caravan to prevent it being blown over by the "very strong northwesterlies".

Covid-19 is continuing to spread through European countries.
A new lockdown is being imposed in parts of Spain's capital Madrid, affecting about a million people.
Madrid reported over 1500 new infections on Wednesday.
Four counties in North Wales have been put into a lockdown, as well as England's Liverpool and Middlesbrough regions.
Europe correspondent Vincent McAviney told Tim Dower cases across Europe are continuing to rise.
He says Turkey and Poland have been added to the UK's quarantine list, which are big tourist destinations.
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On the face of it, this could be the dream scenario for the computer addict in your life.
A charity campaign is underway for New Zealand's first gaming marathon.
An opportunity to play video games for 8, 16 or maybe 25 hours, to raise money for charity.
Sanjay Reddy is heading up this campaign and joined Kate Hawkesby this morning.
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Wellington house prices won't stabilise until more development's given the green light.
The New Zealand Initiative's chief economist Dr Eric Crampton told Kate Hawkesby Wellington housing is on an utterly unsustainable path.
He says the median house now costs just over seven times the median household income.
Wellington City Council's provided a blueprint for more housing intensification but it's attracted fierce opposition from those wanting to protect character and heritage in inner suburbs.
Dr Crampton says folks in leafy inner-city suburbs have always opposed development and higher density.
"If we all do that, the result is astronomical house prices."
Crampton says the median Wellington house now costs more than seven times the median household income.
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There is disagreement over the price of building materials.
Labour is promising to begin market studies into the cost of building supplies, should it win the election.
It says they're too expensive, which is adding to the housing crisis.
But Building Industry Federation chief executive Julian Leyes told Tim Dower that's not the case.
"We have the most competitive and free market building products in the world.
"Our prices are the same of not cheaper than Australia."
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If we're thinking about opening up a trans-Tasman travel bubble and the signs are we're getting close, do we also need to be re-thinking the way we handle quarantine?
One of our top public health academics thinks we do.
University of Otago's Nick Wilson thinks we need purpose-built facilities, if we want to be sure not to have another large outbreak.
He says the Government should stop using hotels to quarantine those who test positive.
Instead, we should be thinking about purpose-built quarantine facilities in places like the Ōhakea Airbase.
What he's saying makes even more sense in light of the fright we've had, with all those new cases from one plane yesterday.
And the security lapses and escapes we've seen in hotels...which were never built to be used in the way they are now.
Hotel quarantine and isolation is at best a short-term stop gap.
Ask yourself this, back at the beginning of the year when this whole thing blew up...how long did you think it would last?
A couple of months...six maybe, at the outside?
So in a year, or maybe two years from now...is it feasible, let alone affordable, to be using hotels, with all their imperfections and of course the high cost...as our front line of defence?
Of course it isn't.
As Professor Wilson says...to keep the virus out long-term, we need to be thinking differently.
Health authorities, he says, should be doing serious work to lower the risks...negative tests before people fly.
This should apply especially to countries where COVID is not under control...specifically...the US, the UK, and India.
The current government doesn't seem to like this much, but National has said it would impose a negative requirement on inbound passengers.
I think the guts of this is...we're in a new reality now.
We've been lucky and successful in our emergency response, but we need to stop treating this as just a blip, and hoping things will be normal soon.
The world has changed...our defences need to change too.

A new campaign hopes to help younger Kiwi women learn what breast cancer symptoms they need to look out for.
The Breast Cancer Foundation's launched its new Change and Check campaign today, which will see thousands of educational stickers put up in clothing stores and gyms.
Ambassador and cancer survivor Sarah Gandy told Tim Dower 88 percent of Kiwi women don't know the nine signs and symptoms of breast cancer.
She says under 45s don't get free mammograms yet, so self-checking is the last line of defence.
She says their study found 88 percent of women don't know there are nine signs of breast cancer.
"They can include things like armpit lumps, skin colour changes on the breasts, and inverted nipples."
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A political scientist says both Collins and Ardern seemed to come alive in last night's debate, compared to last week's debate.
Auckland University's Lara Greaves told Tim Dower both Ardern and Collins had their moments in the debate.
She says they were very evenly matched.
"It kind of did feel they both put more effort in. We are seeing that this election race has turned into a battle."
Greaves says both Collins and Ardern seemed to come alive in last night's debate, compared to last week's debate.
"Ardern brought more energy, which we needed to see. The dynamic in this debate was better as well, the audience helped. 
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Head-scratching perplexity about U.S. democracy in Australia and Denmark. Disdain for “chaos” and “insults” between America's presidential contenders in a Chinese Communist Party tabloid. A European market watcher's warning of a “credibility deficit” in U.S. politics amid fears that a long tradition of peaceful, amicable transfer of power could be in jeopardy.
Many across the world looked on largely aghast as the first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden devolved into a verbal slugfest short on substance but heavy with implications for America’s international image.
Emotions and adjectives ran the gamut but few observers appeared to come away thinking that the last remaining superpower could rise above its bitter partisan rancor as the election looms barely a month away.
“If last night’s presidential debate was supposed to inform and educate, all it did was merely confirm the credibility deficit in U.S. politics, as President Trump, and Democrat nominee Joe Biden, engaged in what can only be described as a fact-free, name-calling contest,” wrote Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.
While many in Europe fondly recalled the more even-keeled America of yesteryear, others in Asia were monitoring the markets — which were little changed mostly. Share prices slipped further in Japan and the dollar weakened against the Japanese yen and the euro. European bourses showed few initial tremors.
But one major worry to emerge from the debate was whether the election results might be challenged or delayed, in part because Trump raised concerns about ballots and possible vote-rigging that his critics say are a ploy to tamp down turnout or scare people away from the polls.
“A highly polarized and possibly legally contested U.S. election is just around the corner,” said Stephen Innes of AxiCorp, a foreign exchange trading services provider. “With mail-in votes likely to be too high (and potentially questioned), there is a chance that we still will not know the result by Inauguration Day, with constitutional chaos ensuing.”
Europe and Africa woke up to reports about the cacophonous showdown overnight.
“The comments I’ve seen from various European press (outlets) is basically: ‘I’m happy I’m not an American voter this year.’ It’s just a mess,” said Jussi Hanhimaki, a Finnish-Swiss professor of International History at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
“That’s all extremely disturbing for many Europeans, who generally would think the United States would be a symbol of democracy -- that’s been the oldest democracy in the world — that has this long, long tradition of, yes, very acrimonious debate, but there’s always been a winner and a peaceful transfer of power,” he said.
Kenyan commentator Patrick Gathara quipped on Twitter: “This debate would be sheer comedy if it wasn’t such a pitiful and tragic advertisement for U.S. dysfunction.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wrote on Facebook: “An election debate in the States last night, where interruptions and quarrels were allowed to fill up way too much. Fortunately, this is not the case in Denmark. And I never hope it will be like that. The harsh words polarize and split.”
Amanda Wishworth, a lawmaker in Australia’s center-left Labor Party, said: “A lot of people would be scratching their heads, especially here from Australia, where, believe it or not, our politics is a little bit more gentle than the U.S. of A.”
Other government leaders tuned in — but kept their distance.
Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, said she was “informed about what took place last night,” but he declined to comment.
“We don’t want to comment on this, don’t want to provide an assessment, because it will be immediately perceived as an attempt to interfere,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Russian Federation has never...

I doubt last night's debate will have changed anyone's mind about who they're voting for in just over two weeks.
And for me there wasn't much in the way of substance, not till almost the end of it, that would have helped someone who was undecided.
I felt Jacinda Ardern came across as aloof and still in COVID statement mode.
She looked as though she'd rather be somewhere else.
Judith Collins came across as vigorous and energised, out to score points and to win the argument, every argument.
The quirks that won it for her last time around, the sniggers, the interruptions, the scoffing, that phrase "I'll tell you what"...actually began to irritate me.
No doubt some of Collins' advisors have been in her ear since last time, telling her what she did well and urging her to do more of it.
And she did, trying and succeeding to rile the PM, but for me, it was overcooked.
Ardern was flat again, speaking in cliches, in a monotone.
She got more applause from the audience, but I don't know what the point of having them was.
Judith Collins tried to play to the crowd, but while she got a few good laughs...they weren't buying the more serious stuff.
The weirdest bit for me was the after-match, and asking each of them to rate how well they'd done.
The panel afterwards seemed to think it was a Collins win.
I gave Jacinda Ardern the first half...just...and I gave Collins the second half...just.
So I guess I'm calling it a draw.
Border Security was on the other side, that probably would have been more entertaining.  I can watch that later.