It was supposed to be her last day firefighting before she began teaching for fall, but the weather had other plans.

Twenty-five-year-old Hailey Schilling, a third-grade teacher at Foster Elementary School, had spent the summer working for the Oregon Department of Forestry as a member of an initial attack crew – the firefighters who get on the scene first when a fire is still small, and try to keep it that way.

Her Labor Day shift was supposed to be the last of the season before school started, until historic strong winds swept through the community that evening, driving existing fires...