Fire crews continue to monitor 'massive' Rolleston scrub fire

Five rural fire trucks are still at the scene of a large fire near Christchurch which destroyed two homes and forced the evacuations of others.

The blaze at Knights Road in Rolleston broke out yesterday afternoon and spread across 1600 square metres.

Fire and Emergency shift manager Riwai Grace said early this morning more firefighters would arrive at daylight today.

They may have a helicopter, and will fly over the area to look for hot spots and checking to see there's no slow-burning fires, Grace said.

Crews will be there for the rest of the day at least and a fire investigator was heading to the scene this morning.

Local man Jason Shaw said yesterday the fire was at least two storeys high.

"There's this huge hedge on fire ... on a farm on the outskirts of Rolleston," he said.

He'd spoken to a relative at Christchurch Airport, about 20km away, who said they could see the smoke from there.

"It's massive all right."

Ashburton TV director Tony Arthur happened to be driving past when he came upon the huge blaze.

"It looked like trouble all right, it really did," Arthur said.

"With the high winds it looked like it could have crossed the road easily. It probably had by the time we left to be honest."

Helicopters with monsoon buckets were attacking the fire until night fell.