Alpine Retreat resident of seven years and fire warden Fred Bramwell told the Queenstown Times he, his wife and their three children were alerted by a neighbour, who was a member of the fire response team, at their door about 5.50am.
"He notified three or four of the key people in our subdivision and we literally go house to house [to] double check everyone's up and aware the fire's there and what the status is."
Department of Conservation (Doc) rural firefighters, Queenstown firefighters, Queenstown police and staff from the Queenstown Lakes District Council, using up to seven helicopters and heli-buckets of Lake Wakatipu water, worked to control the slow-burning vegetation fire from the first 111 report of the blaze about 6am.
Mr Bramwell said work had been done on the Alpine Retreat response system since the major Closeburn fire in January 2007, including a "phone tree" for residents.
"It's effective to a certain degree, but not bullet-proof, so we always go door to door to see who lives up there. We have a mixture of families, older people, tenants and people who are there short-time.
"The issue we've got at Alpine Retreat is if the fire's coming up hot and fast one way, we have no access out, so we have to muster into a water-defendable place."
The Bramwells were among up to 25 residents at the nearby muster point by about 6.30am.
Most people had time to change out of nightwear.
Residents were at the muster point until Doc and the Fire Service told them they could evacuate in their own vehicles, which was about 7am, Mr Bramwell said.
"The mood was OK. It was much worse when we had the Closeburn fire. You could see the fire from where we were and it was quite isolated, so it wasn't as if it was an imminent threat."
Mr Bramwell brought his family into work in Queenstown.
About 11 residents, including two children, were evacuated to the Queenstown Events Centre, which is a civil defence meeting point, by 8am.
All had left by about 9am, chief executive Fiona McKissock said yesterday.
"The residents came to the events centre, where we gave the children some toys and we gave the adults some coffee.
"They were calm and looking forward to being told when they could go back to their homes."
Residents were able to return by 11am.
There was no damage to property and no-one called for medical assistance, St John Queenstown said.
It was strongly suspected the fire started on private land and was caused by power lines.
However, this was unconfirmed yesterday.
