Civil defence officials remain on alert in the West Coast, with heavy rain still pelting down and further significant falls forecast.

In Westland, State Highway 6 is closed from Fox Glacier to the Haast Pass Lookout because of flooding and slips.

At Haast, 244mm of rain has fallen in a 24-hour period. About 100mm fell in the six hours from 6pm Wednesday.

Some schools which have just reopened for the year. will be closed in South Westland today because of flooding affecting much of the West Coast.

South Westland Area School and Haast School both say they will be shut today and tomorrow.

The Waiho River in Franz Josef was being closely monitored and several families living on the south bank of the river had been given the option to relocate to the Franz Josef township for the night, West Coast Emergency Management says.

To the north, a state of emergency is in place in Buller district, where emergency management controller Sean Judd says significant rain is still to come.

Early this morning, the rivers near Westport are still within their banks but Judd says the message remained that people should be ready to leave their homes if necessary.

People in Westport are being urged not to remove sandbags from around Chorus cabinets - the often brightly painted boxes on footpaths that contain fibre and copper network links.

Chorus says it spent days doing flood preparations to keep the telecommunications network going, including refuelling its generators and putting sandbags and plastic wrap around several cabinets in Westport.

Buller Emergency Management has had reports of sandbags being removed from the cabinets, and it is asking people not to take those ones.

Sandbags have been put out elsewhere in both Hokitika and Westport for members of the public to use to protect their properties.

-RNZ.