{"id":16111,"date":"2026-04-30T11:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/?p=16111"},"modified":"2026-04-30T11:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:03:10","slug":"yakima-fire-chief-aaron-markham-to-retire-in-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/yakima-fire-chief-aaron-markham-to-retire-in-june\/","title":{"rendered":"Yakima Fire Chief Aaron Markham to Retire in June"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Yakima Fire Chief Aaron Markham has announced his retirement after nearly 35 years in the fire service, including the last 8 in Yakima.&nbsp; Markham\u2019s last day on the job will be June 30<sup>th<\/sup>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Aaron has served the City of Yakima and the Yakima Valley extraordinarily well over more than three decades,&#8221; said Yakima City Manager Vicki Baker.&nbsp; &#8220;He has had a distinguished career in the fire service and demonstrated a deep understanding of how to administer a fire department and the complexities of providing a wide range of emergency response capabilities.&nbsp; His shoes will be difficult to fill,&#8221; said Baker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Markham, who was born in Yakima and raised in Toppenish, joined the Sunnyside Fire Department in 1991 as a firefighter\/EMT.&nbsp; In 2001, he was promoted to battalion chief\/fire marshal for the Sunnyside Fire Department.&nbsp; Markham served as interim fire chief for the Sunnyside Fire Department in 2004 before being given the permanent fire chief job in 2005.&nbsp; In March of 2018, Markham was hired as a deputy fire chief for the Yakima Fire Department.&nbsp; In June of that year, he was appointed chief of the Yakima Fire Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Markham earned a bachelor&#8217;s degree in fire service administration from Eastern Oregon University and in 2017 earned Executive Fire Officer Certification from the National Fire Academy.\u00a0 He has served as president of the Yakima County Fire Chief&#8217;s Association and as a board member of the Washington State Fire Chief&#8217;s Association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Baker said a process is underway to find Markham\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div data-wp-interactive=\"core\/file\" class=\"wp-block-file\"><object data-wp-bind--hidden=\"!state.hasPdfPreview\" hidden class=\"wp-block-file__embed\" data=\"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/6\/files\/sites\/6\/Yakima-Fire-Chief-to-Retire-News-Release.pdf\" type=\"application\/pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:600px\" aria-label=\"Embed of Yakima Fire Chief to Retire - News Release.\"><\/object><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-394ef811-b5e4-4485-9a14-5007f2b119c6\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/6\/files\/sites\/6\/Yakima-Fire-Chief-to-Retire-News-Release.pdf\">Yakima Fire Chief to Retire &#8211; News Release<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/6\/files\/sites\/6\/Yakima-Fire-Chief-to-Retire-News-Release.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-394ef811-b5e4-4485-9a14-5007f2b119c6\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yakima Fire Chief Aaron Markham has announced his retirement after nearly 35 years in the fire service, including the last 8 in Yakima.&nbsp; Markham\u2019s last day on the job will be June 30th.&nbsp; &#8220;Aaron has served the City of Yakima and the Yakima Valley extraordinarily well over more than three decades,&#8221; said Yakima City Manager<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16113,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions\/16113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}