\u00a0Erie Fire Chief Joe Walko retiring after 44 years with department\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nThe department called it a line-of-duty passing due to a long battle with occupational cancer.<\/p>\n
According to the firefighters’ union, Walko dedicated more than four decades to the department and the safety of the Erie community.<\/p>\n
He served as a firefighter, assistant chief, labor board president and ultimately chief of the fire department during the peak of COVID.<\/p>\n
The fire department said that Walko’s legacy of service, leadership, dedication and friendship will not soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n
Walko was 71 years old.<\/p>\n
“You give a lot of your life to the fire department when you’re on the job, and he was on the job for over 40 years. Joe was very- he was in the union; he was in the army before he became a firefighter; he was on the Wattsburg school board; he was on the credit union board,” said Erie City Fire Chief Leonard Trott. “He was very active in the community, and he was willing to help with anything.”<\/p>\n
Trott said he sends Walko’s family his condolences and hoped that in their grief they can be proud of the life that he lived.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WJET\/WFXP\/YourErie.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Erie Firefighters Labor Union 293 has announced the passing of a former fire chief and long-time member…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,75931,138,137,2087,117543,117544,117547,117545,117546],"class_list":["post-281134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-fire","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-joe","tag-joe-walko","tag-the-erie-firefighters-labor-union","tag-trott","tag-walko","tag-walkos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}