During the last two fire seasons in the American West, the Methow Valley in Washington State experienced the largest wildfires in the state’s history. The example shows that the framing of catastrophic wildfires in the local media varies: the story of the fire can be told in the rhetoric of war heroism as a report from the battlefield, or as a Sisyphean task in the face of disaster, or as a phoenix-from-the-ashes narrative emphasizing the path to recovery. Written with a capital, the Fire can also be reframed in human terms as though it were a petulant child.