An elderly couple are in shock but are doing well after their home was completely destroyed in yesterday's huge blaze that quickly spread due to strong winds in Rolleston near Christchurch.
Fire crews were called to the grass fire at Knights Road around 3pm yesterday and police quickly evacuated houses on Hoskyns Road and set up cordons.
Four crews remain at the scene today, working on dampening down hot spots after crews stayed throughout the night to monitor the area.
Fiona Ensor and her brother Paul are trying to salvage anything they can today at the site of their parents home which they have lived in for eight years.
"They have had to deal with a few set backs in life and unfortunately it's just turned into one of them," Fiona Ensor told 1 NEWS.
"It's been nailed by the fire. It's just bloody bad luck.
"We hope that we can find a couple of things. They literally have the clothes on their back, they saved... Christmas presents.
"Generations of precious furniture and jewelery, all that's gone and paintings that were really precious to my parents."
Ms Ensor's children were at her parent's house yesterday when the fire started and quickly left the house when the fire started to spread.
"Dad went down to have a look and had told Mum to start getting ready to go...he just said 'we have got to get out of here now'."
"It was nothing but smoke. They were lucky to get out because this whole hedge just exploded basically."
Paul told 1 NEWS the fire jumped 150 metres to his parent's property, skipping "a couple of houses along the way.
"Fire crews couldn't access the scene because of the hedge was all on fire. They had no access so there wasn't much they could do unfortunately."
"It's pretty devastating when you see all of your family upset and they have lost pretty much everything they had so it's not good at all."
Ms Ensor said the family has "a bad theme with fire" as their Dad was badly burned 20 years ago in a farm fire.
Paul stated their Dad "got hundreds of messages last night offering support".
"We would like to thank everyone who has offered support and the local fire people for controlling the fire so at least we got the grounds of the house for when we rebuild it."
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