Omri Moyal (22), who is studying English and plans to begin study at the University of Otago next year, said the brother of a close friend was believed to be one of 36 to have died on a bus that was engulfed in flames.
News reports had described those who died as prison guards, but Mr Moyal said in fact they were involved in a course for prison guards.
International news reports last night said the flames had forced 12,000 people from their homes, levelled a village and threatened to cause irreparable harm to one of Israel's few forested areas.
The fire was still burning out of control last night.
Mr Moyal said he had been following the event through his friends on Facebook who were helping fight the fire, posting on the site after getting home from the firefighting effort.
Their reports were that the scene was "really, really horrible, the worst thing you could ever, ever imagine; like the end of the world".
The area had been subject to strong winds, there had been no rain for the past month, and humidity was very low.
The fire fronts are across a forest south of Haifa, a city similar to Dunedin with a core population of 120,000, but surrounded by settlements that made the broader population closer to 200,000.
Mr Moyal's father, who lived north of the forest, was helping in the effort to fight the fire.
His mother and sister, who lived in Megadim, near the coast west of the fire, had been evacuated and were safe.
"I'm worried about my friends; they're not used to this kind of fire."
"It's frustrating. I've been volunteering all my life, [and] in the army, and I can't do anything."
Apart from the loss of life and property, Mr Moyal said the loss of the forest was also a tragedy.
"I've been walking in this forest all my life.
"It's one of the most beautiful places in Israel."
While Beit Oren, a community of about 10,000 people, in the middle of the forest had been evacuated, nobody had heard from a nearby small and isolated community of about 20 people.
Mr Moyal said he had planned to go home at Christmas, which he would still do, though "not under the same circumstances as I planned".
