The San Joaquin Valley ( ; ) is the southern half of California's Central Valley, an area drained by the San Joaquin River. Praised as a breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is a major source of food, producing a significant part of California's agricultural output.

San Joaquin Valley draws from eight counties of Northern and one of Southern California, including all of San Joaquin and Kings counties, most of Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno counties, and parts of Madera and Tulare counties, along with a majority of Kern County in Southern California. Although the valley is predominantly rural, it has three densely populated urban centers:  Stockton/Modesto, Fresno/Visalia, and Bakersfield.

Geography

The San Joaquin Valley is the southern half of California's Central Valley. It extends from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in the north to the Tehachapi Mountains in the south, and from the California coastal ranges (Diablo and Temblor) in the west to the Sierra Nevada in the east.

The valley contains two large river systems, divided north and south. The northern portion of San Joaquin Valley is called the San Joaquin Basin: the watershed of the San Joaquin River and its tributaries including parts of the Kings River, all of which drain northwest into the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and eventually out to the Pacific Ocean. The somewhat larger southern portion is the Tulare Basin, an endorheic basin centered on Tulare Lake. Historically, Tulare Lake was fed by the Tule River, the Kings River, the Kaweah River, the White River and the Kern River, but much of this water has been diverted for agricultural uses and the watershed is mostly dry in its lower reaches.

Geological history

The San Joaquin Valley began to form about 66 million years ago during the early Paleocene era. Broad fluctuations in the sea level caused various areas of the valley to be flooded with ocean water for the next 60 million years. About 5 million years ago, the marine outlets began to close due to uplift of the coastal ranges and the deposition of sediment in the valley. Starting 2 million years ago, a series of glacial episodes periodically caused much of the valley to become a fresh water lake. Lake Corcoran was the last widespread lake to fill the valley about 700,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Holocene there were three major lakes remaining in the southern part of the Valley, Tulare Lake, Buena Vista Lake and Kern Lake. In the late 19th and in the 20th century, agricultural diversion of the Kern River eventually dried out these lakes. Today, only a fragment of Buena Vista Lake remains as two small lakes Lake Webb and Lake Evans in a portion of the former Buena Vista Lakebed.

Climate
The San Joaquin Valley has extremely hot, dry summers and pleasantly mild winters characterized by dense tule fog. Its rainy season normally runs from November through April. The valley has experienced a severe and intensifying megadrought since the early 2010s. This drought is not only affecting humans, with farmland  taking much of the impact, but also the wildlife  as well.

In August 2015, the Director of the California Department of Water Resources stated, "Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows—up to 100 feet lower than previous records."
Research from NASA shows that parts of the San Joaquin Valley sank as much as  in a four-month period, and land near Corcoran sank  in 8 months. The sinking has destroyed thousands of groundwater well casings and has the potential to damage aqueducts, roads, bridges, and flood-control structures. In the long term, the subsidence caused by extracting groundwater could irreversibly reduce the underground aquifer's water storage capacity, although immediate and short term needs are given higher priority and sense of urgency than long term sustainability.

The National Weather Service Forecast Office for the San Joaquin Valley is located in Hanford and includes a Doppler weather radar. Weather forecasts and climatological information for the San Joaquin Valley are available from its official website.

Early human settlement
The San Joaquin Valley was originally inhabited by the Yokuts and Miwok peoples. The first European to enter the valley was Pedro Fages in 1772.

The Tejon Indian Tribe of California is a federally recognized tribe of Kitanemuk, Yokuts, and Chumash indigenous people of California. Their ancestral homeland is the southern San Joaquin Valley, San Emigdio Mountains, and Tehachapi Mountains. Today they live in Kern County, California, headquartered in Wasco and Bakersfield, California.

The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of indigenous people of California, Chukchansi or Foothills Yokuts, now located in Madera County in the San Joaquin Valley. The Santa Rosa Rancheria belongs to the federally recognized Tachi Yokuts tribe and is located  southeast of Lemoore, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. Since 2010, statewide droughts in California have further strained both the San Joaquin Valley's and the Sacramento Valley's water security.

Demographics
The total population of the eight counties comprising the San Joaquin Valley at the time of the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates by United States Census Bureau reported  a population of 4,080,509. The racial composition of San Joaquin Valley was 1,428,978 (35.0%) Non-Hispanic White, 2,048,280 (50.2%) Hispanic or Latino, 310,557 (7.6%) Asian, 193,694 (4.7%) Black or African American, 40,911 (1.0%) American Indian and Alaska Native, and 13,000 (0.32%) Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander.

The educational attainment of high school graduate or higher is 72.7%.

Poverty

According to the United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey, six San Joaquin Valley counties had the highest percentage of residents living below the federal poverty line in 2006 of any counties in California. The report also revealed that the same six counties were among the 52 counties with the highest poverty rate in the United States. The median income for a household in the valley was $46,713. The poverty rate for individuals below the poverty level is 23.7%.

Ethnic and cultural groups

Latinos/Hispanics, Chicanos and Mexicans

Currently, the Latino and Mexican descendants are large percentage of the demographics in the San Joaquin Valley. Since not long after the onset of the bracero program during World War II, all but a minor percentage of the farmworkers in the region have been of Mexican ancestry. Ethnic and economic friction between Mexican-Americans and the valley's predominantly white farming elite manifested itself most notably during the 1960s and 1970s, when the United Farm Workers, led by César Chávez, went on numerous strikes and called for boycotts of table grapes. The UFW generated enormous sympathy throughout the United States, even managing to terminate several agricultural mechanization projects at the United States Department of Agriculture. However, from the 1970s onward, landlords and large corporations have also hired undocumented immigrants. This has allowed them to increase their profits due to low overhead on wages.

European and Asian groups
The San Joaquin Valley has—by California standards—an unusually large number of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian ethnicities in the heritage of its citizens. These communities are often quite large and, relative to Americans immigration patterns, quite eclectic: for example, there are more Azorean Portuguese in the San Joaquin Valley than in the Azores. Many groups are found in majorities in specific cities, and hardly anywhere else in the region. For example, Assyrians are concentrated in Turlock, Dutch in Ripon, Sikhs in Stockton and Livingston, and Croats in Delano. Kingsburg is famous for its distinctly Swedish air, having been founded by immigrants from that country. Ethnic groups found in a broader area are Portuguese, Germans, Armenians, Basques, and the "Okies" of primarily English and Scots-Irish descent who migrated to California from the Midwest and South. Mennonite groups descended from Russian Germans settled in the areas of Reedley and Dinuba, as well as Lutheran and Catholic Volga Germans who settled in the broader Fresno area. Since the early 1970s East Indians of predominantly Punjabi, Gujrati and Southern India have settled in the valley communities. Most recently large numbers of Pakistanis have settled in Modesto and Lodi. In addition, the late 1970s and '80s saw an influx of immigrants from Indochina following the War in Vietnam. These immigrants, the majority of whom are Hmong, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese, have settled in the communities of Stockton, Modesto, Merced, and Fresno.

The Filipino American population is concentrated in Delano and Lathrop. Filipinos have a strong history in Stockton. Filipino organizations in Stockton are reflected in various commercial buildings identified as Filipino. Filipinos fought for the U.S. against Japan in WWII, in exchange for favorable immigration status. Stockton has been an adjunct to the San Francisco Bay Area, which was a major military production and transit area during WWII. Filipino emigration to Stockton followed.

These cultures are often the result of established ethnic communities and groups of immigrants coming to the United States at once. This is in part due to the founding of religious communes in the San Joaquin Valley: for example, the first permanent Sikh Gurdwara was founded in Stockton in 1915.

African Americans
Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park marks the location of the only California town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans. The small farming community was founded in 1908 by Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth, Professor William Payne, William Peck, a minister, John W. Palmer, a miner, and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, dedicated to improving the economic and social status of African Americans. Uncontrollable circumstances, including a drop in the area's water table, resulted in the town's demise.

Okies and Arkies
The Depression-era migrants to the San Joaquin Valley from the South and Midwest are one of the more well-known groups in the Central Valley, in large part due to the popularity of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the Henry Fonda movie made from it. By 1910, agriculture in the southern Great Plains had become nearly unviable due to soil erosion and poor rainfall. Much of the rural population of states such as Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas left at this time, selling their land and moving to Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit, and fast-growing Los Angeles. Those who remained experienced continuing deterioration of conditions, which reached their nadir during the drought that began in the late 1920s and created the infamous Dust Bowl. (Small cotton farmers in states such as Mississippi and Alabama suffered similar problems from the first major infestation of the boll weevil.) When the onset of the Great Depression created a national banking crisis, family farmers—usually heavily in debt—often had their mortgages foreclosed by banks desperate to shore up their balance sheets. In response, many farmers loaded their families and portable possessions into their automobiles and drove west.

Many of the Okies and Arkies left the San Joaquin Valley during World War II, most of them going to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego to work in war-related industries. Many of those who stayed ended up in Bakersfield and Oildale, as the southern San Joaquin Valley became an important area of oil production after major Southern California oil fields such as Signal Hill began to dry up. Country music legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard came out of Bakersfield's honky-tonk scene and created a hard-driving sound that is still deeply associated with the city.

Economy

Agriculture

The San Joaquin Valley produces 12.8% of California's agricultural production (as measured by dollar value). Often called a breadbasket region, the valley farms emphasize fruits, vegetables and nuts more than grain for bread. Major crops include grapes (wine grapes, table grapes and raisins), cotton, almonds, pistachios, citrus, and vegetables. Walnuts, oranges, peaches, garlic, tangerines, tomatoes, kiwis, hay, alfalfa and numerous other crops have been harvested with great success. Certain places are identified quite strongly with a given crop: Stockton produces the majority of the domestic asparagus consumed in the United States, and Fresno County is the largest producer of raisins.

Cattle and sheep ranching are also vitally important to the valley's economy. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Miller & Lux corporation built an agricultural monopoly centered around cattle. The corporation can be characterized as a precursor to corporate farming transforming the yeoman farmer into wage workers. The success of the business can be attributed to founder Henry Miller's direct management style which is reflected in his detailed correspondences to his subordinates. During recent years, dairy farming has greatly expanded in importance. As areas such as Chino and Corona have become absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, many dairy farmers have cashed out and moved their herds to Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties.

Between 1990 and 2004, 28,092 hectares (70,231 acres) of agricultural land was lost to urban development in the San Joaquin Valley. Although there have been some token efforts at confronting the problems of (sub)urban sprawl, the politically conservative climate of the Valley generally prefers traditional suburban sprawl type of growth such as low density housing and strip malls anchored by so-called big box stores and opposes measures such as "Smart Growth", "Transit Oriented Development", "High Density Housing", and increased public transit such as light and commuter rail. By August 2014, a three-year drought was prompting changes to the agriculture industry in the valley. Farmers began using complex irrigation systems and using treated waste water to feed crops, while many were switching from farming cotton to other commodities, chief among them, almonds.

Petroleum

California has long been one of the nation's most important oil-producing states, and the San Joaquin Valley has long since eclipsed the Los Angeles Basin as the state's primary oil production region. Scattered oil wells on small oil fields are found throughout the region, and several enormous extraction facilities – most notably near Lost Hills and Taft, including the enormous Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the third-largest oil field in the United States – are veritable forests of pumps.

Shell operated a major refinery in Bakersfield; it was sold in 2005 to Flying J, a Salt Lake-based firm that operates truck stops and refineries.  Flying J's bankruptcy in 2009 resulted in the refinery being shut down.

The oil and gas fields in Kern County are receiving increased attention since the July 2009 announcement by Occidental Petroleum of significant discovery of oil and gas reserves Even prior to this discovery the region retains more oil reserves than any other part of California. Of California fields outside of the San Joaquin Valley, only the Wilmington Oil Field in Los Angeles County has untapped reserves greater than , while six fields in the San Joaquin Valley (Midway-Sunset, Kern River, South Belridge, Elk Hills, Cymric, and Lost Hills) each have reserves exceeding  of oil.

Other major industries and employers
The isolation and vastness of the San Joaquin Valley, as well as its poverty and need for jobs, have led the state to build numerous prisons in the area. The most notable of these is Corcoran, whose inmates have included Charles Manson and Juan Corona. Other correctional facilities in the valley are at Avenal, Chowchilla, Tracy, Delano, Coalinga, and Wasco.

The only significant military base in the region is Naval Air Station Lemoore, a vast air base located  WSW of Hanford. Unlike many of California's other military installations, NAS Lemoore's operational importance has increased in the 1990s and 2000s. The other, Castle Air Force Base, located near Atwater was closed during the Base Realignment and Closure of the 1990s. Although both are in Kern County, Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station are located in the High Desert area of that county.

Recent changes
The California real estate boom that began in the late 1990s has significantly changed the San Joaquin Valley. Once distinctly and fiercely independent of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the area has seen increasing exurban development as the cost of living forces young families and small businesses further and further away from the coastal urban cores. Stockton, Modesto, Tracy (as well as the nearby unincorporated community of Mountain House), Manteca, and Los Banos are increasingly dominated by commuters to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and the small farming towns to the south are finding themselves in the Bay Area's orbit as well. Bakersfield, traditionally a boom-bust oil town once described by urban scholar Joel Kotkin as an "American Abu Dhabi," has seen a massive influx of former Los Angeles business owners and commuters, to the extent that gated communities containing million-dollar homes are going up on the city's outskirts. Wal-Mart, IKEA, Target, Amazon, CVS Pharmacy, Restoration Hardware, and other various large shipping firms have built huge distribution centers both in the southern end of the valley and northern part of the valley because of quick access to major interstates and low local wages.  Further integration with the rest of the state is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Roads

Interstate 5 (I-5) and State Route 99 (SR 99) each run nearly the entire length of the San Joaquin Valley. I-5 runs in the western part of the valley, bypassing the major population centers (including Fresno, currently the largest U.S. city without an Interstate highway), while SR 99 runs through them. Both highways then merge at the southern end of valley en route to Los Angeles. When the Interstate Highway System was created in the 1950s, the decision was made to build I-5 as an entirely then-new freeway bypass instead of upgrading the then-existing U.S. 99. Since then, state and federal representatives have pushed to convert SR 99 to an Interstate, although this cannot occur until all of the portions of SR 99 between I-5 and the U.S. 50 junction in Sacramento are upgraded to Interstate standards.

State Route 58 (SR 58), which is a freeway in Bakersfield and along most of its route until its terminus in Barstow, is an extremely important and very heavily traveled route for truckers from the valley and the Bay Area who want to cross the Sierra Nevada and leave California (by way of Interstate 15 or Interstate 40) without having to climb Donner Pass or brave the traffic congestion of Los Angeles. Proposals have also been made to designate this highway as a western extension of I-40 once the entirety of the route between Mojave and Barstow has been upgraded to a freeway. This would provide an Interstate connection for Bakersfield, currently the second-largest U.S. city without an Interstate. The most recent additions to this system are State Routes 168 and 180. Route 168 begins in Fresno on Route 180 linking to Huntington Lake in the mountains through Clovis and many smaller communities. This route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System[2] and is eligible for the State Scenic Highway System[3]. State Route 180 is a state highway which runs through the heart of the San Joaquin Valley from Mendota through Fresno to Kings Canyon National Park. A short piece near the eastern end, through the Grant Grove section of Kings Canyon National Park, is not state-maintained. The part east of unbuilt State Route 65 near Minkler is eligible for the State Scenic Highway System; the road east of Dunlap is the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway, a Forest Service Byway.

Other important highways in the valley include State Route 46 (SR 46) and State Route 41 (SR 41), which respectively link the California Central Coast with Bakersfield and Fresno; State Route 33 (SR 33), which runs south to north along the valley's western rim and provides a connection to Ventura and Santa Barbara over the Santa Ynez Mountains; and State Route 152 (SR 152), an important commuter route linking Silicon Valley with its fast-growing exurbs such as Los Banos.

Rail
Amtrak San Joaquin service handles passenger traffic between Bakersfield and Stockton with extensions to either Sacramento or Oakland. Amtrak rail service does not continue south of Bakersfield, as the Union Pacific Railroad does not currently allow the San Joaquin trains to run on the highly congested rail route over Tehachapi Pass, which is the only route between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. Passengers between these towns must travel on Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach. The Coast Starlight passes nonstop through the San Joaquin Valley on extremely rare circumstances when detours are required due to trackwork on its normal trackage. The San Joaquin Valley is also the location of the planned initial operating segment of the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project, which will run 171 miles from Bakersfield in the south to Merced in the north.

Freight service is provided by BNSF, UPRR and San Joaquin Valley Railroad.

Electricity
The valley is served by the Western Area Power Administration. Western owns and operates its own equipment here and so performs its own weed management. Rotating and mixing herbicide modes of action are employed to preserve efficacy.

Public health

Air pollution

Hemmed in by mountains and rarely having strong winds to disperse smog, the San Joaquin Valley has long suffered from some of the United States' worst air pollution. This pollution, exacerbated by stagnant weather, comes mainly from diesel and gasoline fueled vehicles and agricultural operations. Ammonium nitrate, which forms from the combination of vehicle nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia gas contained in cow manure and urine, "accounts for more than half of the region's PM2.5 on the area's most polluted days."

Population growth has caused the San Joaquin Valley to rank with Los Angeles and Houston in most measures of air pollution. Only the Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles has worse overall air quality, and the San Joaquin Valley led the nation in 2004 in the number of days with quantities of ozone considered unhealthy by the Environmental Protection Agency. The San Joaquin Valley has been deemed an "extreme non-attainment zone" by the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning residents are exposed to air quality that is confirmed to be hazardous to human health.

Crop loss
The region of the San Joaquin Valley has some of the richest soil that allows for the production of many crops.  Crops in this region include: grapes, oranges, cotton, vegetables and nuts. The plethora of crop land allows for the valley to benefit from the income of crop sales. About sixty percent of California's crops come from the land in this area.  However, the unhealthy air levels that arise from smog lead to the destruction of many crops. According to the California Air Resources Board the San Joaquin Valley loses about one billion dollars every year due to the pollution in the air destroying these crops.

Negative effects on public health
The San Joaquin Valley suffers from extremely high ozone levels that tend to increase even more on hot days.  Kids are more inclined to play outdoors during summer when the weather is warmer. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency this could lead to health issues such as asthma because these children are not fully developed yet.  The elderly population is also vulnerable to air pollution and could even suffer from heart attacks due to decreased lung functions.  Reports state that the residents in this community suffer from high rates of asthma and experience many related symptoms.

Nitrates in groundwater
San Joaquin Valley is a major agricultural center of California. The agricultural demand for water far outstrips the urban and industrial demand. Overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and irrigated agriculture is common, and according to Thomas Harter, the chair for Water Resources Management and Policy at UC Davis, "more than 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year may leach into groundwater beneath irrigated lands, usually as nitrates". Between the 1950s and 1980s, when nitrogen fertilizer use grew sixfold, nitrate concentrations in groundwater increased 2.5 times. Fertilizer runoffs contributes roughly 90% of all nitrate inputs to the alluvial groundwater system. Within agriculture, the two major factors are High-Intensity Crop Production and Large Dairy Herds. Because these communities are cut off from larger water distribution, they are dependent on wells, making groundwater a source of drinking water for 90% of San Joaquin Valley's residents.

Nitrates have found their way into the aquifers around the San Joaquin Valley, affecting over 250,000 people in communities that are poor and rural.  In 2006, the State Water Resources Board took samples from domestic wells in Tulare County; they found that 40% of 181 domestic wells had nitrate levels above the 10 mg/L legal limit. Though locals have typically used filters for their water, the filters need to be installed correctly and replaced frequently, which may not be economically feasible for the residents in Orosi. Table 2 on page 20 from Pacific Institute's "The Human Costs of Nitrate-contaminated Drinking Water in the San Joaquin Valley" indicates the water systems that were contaminated with nitrates over the legal limit, the percentage of the population affected that are non-white and that are below or near poverty-level, and the year since the violations began.

The Turlock Basin is a sub-basin of the San Joaquin Valley groundwater basin found within Stanislaus County and Merced County in the Central Valley. In California's Groundwater Bulletin 118, a chart, linked below, illustrates the number of non-compliant public supply wells with nitrates over the MCL. According to this chart, there were eight wells which had nitrate levels above the 10 mg/L MCL, out of 90 sampled for nitrates in 2006.

Nitrates are of concern because it interferes with the blood's ability to carry oxygen, and can have severe health effects on pregnant women, infants under 6 months, and children using tap water for their formula. Because nitrates interfere with blood's capacity to carry oxygen, infants are at high risk of death from blue-baby syndrome, which can occur when there are high nitrate levels in the blood that are untreated.

High-intensity crop production
Within the past century, farmers have been increasing their production to meet high demand. To increase output and efficiency, farmers have increased the amount of fertilizers used, including nitrates. Because only a fraction of the nitrogen in fertilizers is efficiently used to help produce crops, this has led to a greater concentration of nitrates and phosphates in the waters, causing eutrophication and contamination of possible drinking water.

Large dairy herds
Before the rapid rise in demand for meat products and dairy, roaming dairy herds had contributed an insignificant amount of nitrate pollution to the underlying groundwater systems. However, within the past few decades, the increasing amount of cattle has been one of the main contributors of nitrate contamination in the groundwater systems of California. Roughly around 1960, cattle were openly grazing pastures, and because of the large amount of lands which they roamed manure was not intensively managed. However, even though manure was not closely managed, "Nitrogen excretion and deposition in pastures likely did not exceed pasture buffering capacity and had no significant leaching to groundwater". Since the transition to dry-lot and free stall-based dairy farming in the mid-1970s, coupled with irrigated forage crops, dairy herds have contributed to nitrogen contamination.

Possible solutions and alternatives
The large dairy herds create manure, which is used to create the fertilizers that is applied to the crop fields. As demand for crops increases, farmers look to lower the costs of production. Using manure-based fertilizers is cost effective since manure is a by-product of large dairy farms and herds. The alternative to manure, which contains a high level of nitrates, is composting. Composting however is relatively expensive compared to using manure as fertilizer, since it is not as effective and is more timely/costly to make because of the large amount of aeration needed.

San Joaquin Valley Fever
San Joaquin Valley Fever, or coccidioidomycosis, is a fungal infection caused by Coccidioides immitis through the inhalation of airborne dust or dirt. The valley is just one of the areas in the southwestern United States where the illness is endemic due to C. immitis residing in the soil.

Cities and counties

Cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants
 Fresno

Cities with 100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants
 Bakersfield
 Clovis
 Modesto
 Stockton
 Visalia

Cities with 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants

 Atwater
 Ceres
 Corcoran
 Delano
 Dinuba
 Hanford
 Lathrop
 Lemoore
 Lodi
 Los Banos
 Madera
 Manteca
 Merced
 Oakdale
 Patterson
 Porterville
 Reedley
 Riverbank
 Sanger
 Selma
 Shafter
 Tracy
 Tulare
 Turlock
 Wasco

Cities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants

 Arvin
 Avenal
 Chowchilla
 Coalinga
 Dos Palos
 Escalon
 Exeter
 Farmersville
 Firebaugh
 Gustine
 Hughson
 Kerman
 Kettleman City
 Keyes
 Kingsburg
 Lindsay
 Livingston
 McFarland
 Mendota
 Newman
 Orange Cove
 Parlier
 Ripon
 San Joaquin
 Taft
 Waterford
 Woodlake

In popular culture
The San Joaquin Valley has been a major influence in American country, soul, nu metal, R&B, and hip hop music particularly through the  Bakersfield Sound, the Doowop Era, and  the Bakersfield Rap Scene, also referred to as Central California Hip Hop, Central Valley Hip Hop, or Central California Rap, which are all subgenres of Gangsta rap, Bass-Rap, West Coast G-funk, and West Coast Hip hop which are all different styles of West Coast Rap.  The Valley has been the home to many country, nu metal, and doo-wop musicians and singers, such as Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Billy Mize, Korn, Red Simpson, Dennis Payne, Tommy Collins, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, The Paradons, The Colts, and  the Sons of the San Joaquin. The San Joaquin Valley is also home to many Indie Hip Hop labels, R&B singers, Jazz & Funk  musicians, and Hip Hop artist such as: Fashawn, Killa Tay, The Def Dames, Cali Agents,  Planet Asia. The Valley also has a strong literary tradition, heavy in poetry, producing many famous poets such as Sherley Anne Williams, and Gary Soto, former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and David St. John.

See also

 Groundwater-related subsidence
 List of California rivers
 Sacramento Valley
 San Joaquin (soil)
 Water in California

References

External links
Land of Risk/Land of Opportunity, UC Davis, November 2011

Valleys of California
Regions of California
San Joaquin River
Valleys of Fresno County, California
Valleys of Kern County, California
Valleys of Kings County, California
Valleys of Madera County, California
Valleys of Merced County, California
Valleys of San Joaquin County, California
Valleys of Stanislaus County, California
Valleys of Tulare County, California

San Joaquin Valley


Ronald John Hayter (July 30, 1936 – April 21, 2018) was the longest-serving city councillor of Edmonton, Alberta, having served since 1971 until 1995, when he stepped down to join the National Parole Board. He returned to council during the 2001 civic election, was re-elected in the 2004 and 2007 civic elections, and retired in 2010. During his tenure, he spearheaded people-friendly development such as the Shaw Convention Center, the LRT, waste recycling programs, preservation of the River Valley wilderness, and promotion of arts and especially sports events that helped turned a modest oil and agriculture city into a world class capital. He was proudest though, of his lifelong efforts to promote the rights of, and create reconciliation with, First Nations communities.

Background
Hayter was born in Northern Saskatchewan on July 30, 1936, to Vera Smith Hayter of Regina, Saskatchewan, and Raleigh "Slim" Hayter, of Murray Hill, Prince Edward Island.  Raleigh was then a Saskatchewan lumberman who later lived as a trapper in Northern Alberta on the Little Berland River until his death in 1984.  Ron was the oldest of six boys, all raised in the lumber camp at Akosane, Saskatchewan.  They were a poor family.  His father was opposed to school, and Hayter didn't get the chance to attend school until age 12 when his father was incarcerated for illegal deer hunting.  He nevertheless graduated at 18 and went to work for Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray as a reporter for the Alaska Highway News.  When he was 22, in 1957, he got a scoop about the collapse of the Peace River Suspension Bridge, which got him national attention and a job at the Edmonton Journal.  The night his first child was born, he appeared live on the CBC quiz show Front Page Challenge to discuss this story.

Hayter later became a correspondent for Time magazine.  An amateur boxer and baseball player in his youth, he went on to sit on international sporting bodies IAMBA and the World Boxing Association (WBA), and headed the Canadian Boxing body for many years.  He was a judge at some world heavyweight bouts and helped bring baseball to the Summer Olympics. In 2006, he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and was also in the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame.  He served as president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson hired Hayter as an advisor to help create Sport Canada. He received the Vanier Award and the Queen's Jubilee Medal for community service.

Hayter was married to Grace Jacqueline (Jac'y) Bacon Hayter who predeceased him in 2005, and was the father of four children, the writer Sparkle Hayter, Sandra Hayter, Nevin Hayter, and Hudson Hayter, who died in infancy.  He was the nephew of the late bush pilot and aviation pioneer Henry W. "Harry" Hayter, who is in Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame. Hayter was diagnosed with dementia in his later years and died of pneumonia on April 21, 2018, in St. Albert, Alberta, at the age of 81.

References

1936 births
2018 deaths
Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Canadian magazine journalists
Deaths from pneumonia in Alberta
Edmonton city councillors
Politicians from Regina, Saskatchewan
20th-century Canadian politicians
21st-century Canadian politicians

Ron Hayter


Kevin Patrick Wacholz (born April 17, 1958) is an American retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1992 under the ring name Nailz. He is also known for his appearances with the American Wrestling Association (AWA) in the 1980s as "Mr. Magnificent" Kevin Kelly.

Professional wrestling career

Early career (1982–1986)
Wacholz started wrestling in 1982 after winning a Toughman Contest. He wrestled in various territories in Tennessee, Montreal, Central States, and the Pacific Northwest.

In 1985 he wrestled as Thor for World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas. Had feuds with Bobby Fulton and Brian Adias. That same year he worked with the same gimmick for Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling.

In 1986 he worked for New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

American Wrestling Association (1984–1988)
Wacholz debut in the American Wrestling Association (AWA) as Kevin Kelly in 1984, as a babyface midcarder. By 1986, he was a top heel and challenged for the AWA World Heavyweight Championship. He used the moniker, "Mr. Magnificent" Kevin Kelly.

In 1987, he was managed by Sherri Martel and regularly issued arm wrestling challenges. This led to a feud with Tommy Rich, who answered one of his challenges on an edition of AWA Championship Wrestling on ESPN. Rich appeared to have the contest won, when Martel interfered on Kelly's behalf. In retaliation, Rich tore off her dress.  Rich would then dominate a series of matches between the two.

After Martel left the AWA, Kelly took Madusa Miceli as his manager. He often teamed with Nick Kiniski as "The Perfect Tag Team" to contend for the AWA World Tag Team Championship.

He left the AWA in 1988, before it folded in 1991.

Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (1990)
In June 1990, Kelly returned to Japan for Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling where he had a feud with Dick Murdoch.

World Wrestling Federation (1989, 1991, 1992)
Wacholz, still performing under the name Kevin Kelly, received a tryout match on June 6, 1989, at a WWF Superstars taping in Madison, WI, defeating Tim Horner. A night later he defeated Jim Powers at a Wrestling Challenge taping, but was not signed to a contract that year. After the AWA folded, Wacholz received another tryout match, this time at a WWF Superstars taping on May 6, 1991, defeating Brian Costello. The following night at a Wrestling Challenge taping he defeated Gary Jackson in a dark match.

In early 1992, Wacholz returned to the WWF as Nailz, an ex-convict who, in a series of promos, alleged he was abused by former prison guard Big Boss Man during his incarceration. He also claimed to be innocent of his (unspecified) crimes. Following Big Boss Man's squash of Dave Roulette on the May 30 episode of WWF Superstars of Wrestling, Nailz (dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit) attacked Boss Man, handcuffing him to the top rope before repeatedly hitting and choking him with his own nightstick. Nailz easily defeated numerous jobbers en route to defeating Boss Man's ally Virgil at SummerSlam. He attacked Sgt. Slaughter before a match that ended in a no contest in September 1992. He continued to feud with Boss Man, who had recovered from Nailz's beating. The feud came to its climax when Big Boss Man defeated Nailz in a nightstick match at Survivor Series. Before Nailz finished the feud with Boss Man, he began another feud, this time with The Undertaker.  The two had a stare down on the October 24 episode of Superstars, a photo of which was used as the cover of the January 1993 issue of WWF Magazine. He had a few matches losing to WWF Champion Bret Hart. Also he had a short feud with The Ultimate Warrior.

Wacholz was released from his WWF contract in December 1992, after he attacked Vince McMahon in his office over a financial dispute, while John Nord watched the door. The incident occurred on December 14 during a house show in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Bret Hart recalled in his autobiography that Wacholz "cornered Vince in his office and screamed at him for fifteen minutes". Hart claims he was just down the hall from the office when he heard a loud crash, which was Wacholz "knocking Vince over in his chair, choking him violently". The incident led to a series of lawsuits between Wacholz and the WWF. Wacholz alleged McMahon had given him steroids on a number of occasions; McMahon denied the claim. Wacholz then filed a wrongful termination lawsuit claiming McMahon sexually assaulted him. The WWF filed a counterclaim against Wacholz, but both suits were later dropped. In 1994, Wacholz testified against McMahon during his trial on charges of supplying steroids to WWF wrestlers. He claimed McMahon had told him to take steroids.

World Championship Wrestling (1993, 1997–1998)
After getting fired from the WWF, Wacholz appeared at World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) Slamboree event in 1993 as "The Prisoner" (looking identical to his Nailz persona), losing to Sting.

He returned to WCW for several appearances over a six-month period from 1997 to 1998. His return began on October 6, 1997, when he defeated Yuji Nagata in a dark match on Monday Nitro. His last appearance was on April 17, 1998, where he defeated Barry Darsow at a house show.

Late career (1993–2001)
After WCW, Wacholz began working in the independent circuit.

From 1993 to 1997 he worked for Pro Wrestling America in Minnesota where he feuded with Road Warrior Hawk.

He was World Wide Wrestling Alliance's heavyweight champion in 1994. He dropped the title to Brutus Beefcake on April 16.

He wrestled in Jim Crockett's short-lived promotion, WWN, in 1994, as "The Convict". He also wrestled for New Japan Pro-Wrestling that year, as D.O.C. Nelson and Nailz, teaming with Ron Simmons.

In 1996, Wacholz appeared in Paul Alperstein's American Wrestling Federation as Nails (pronounced like "Nailz") alongside many WWF wrestlers from the 1980s and 1990s who were also wrestling in that promotion. On November 1, 1997, he lost to Jimmy Snuka at World Wrestling Alliance in Fort Lewis, Washington.

His last match was a loss to Matt Burns by disqualification on August 25, 2001, at an independent show in Orrock, Minnesota. After that, Wacholz officially retired from wrestling, later disappeared.

Championships and accomplishments
Oregon Wrestling Federation
OWF Heavyweight Champion (1 time)
World Wide Wrestling Alliance
WWWA Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
PWI ranked him #78 of the top 500 singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 1992
PWI ranked him #336 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the "PWI Years" in 2003

References

External links

1958 births
American male professional wrestlers
Living people
People from Bloomington, Minnesota
Professional wrestlers from Minnesota
20th-century professional wrestlers

Nailz


An arrowsmith is a person to takes on an occupation/role/job that forges the heads of arrows. This is usually brought up in medieval history, as more modern jobs came along, and just a small amount of the population (most of those people working for rural purposes), has the occupation today. The idea of archery was created in 20,000 BC. Like today, people did not use the bow and arrow on a regular basis. But unlike today, they mostly used this new creation for hunting. The first people ever to use it normally was the ancient Egyptians from 4,000 to 2,000 BC. Then the bows started to take a fall in popularity across the world, as gunpowder was invented, along with the cannon. It spread across eurasia, after being invented in China in the third century. (200AD)

Archery
Metalworking occupations

Arrowsmith


Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS), was an American computer systems manufacturing company active from 1979 to 1996. It was originally a division of the Zenith Radio Company (later Zenith Electronics), after they had purchased the Heath Company and, by extension, their Heathkit line of electronic kits and kit microcomputers, from Schlumberger in October 1979. ZDS originally operated from Heath's own headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan. By the time Zenith acquired Heathkit, their H8 kit computer already had an installed fanbase of scientific engineers and computing enthusiasts. ZDS' first offerings were merely preassembled versions of existing Heathkit computers, but within a few years, the company began selling bespoke systems, including the Z-100, which was a hybrid Z80- and 8088-based computer capable of running both CP/M and MS-DOS.

ZDS avoided the retail consumer market, instead focusing on business and government customers, such as companies, universities, and government agencies. By the late 1980s, the company had won several lucrative government contracts worth several hundreds of millions of dollars combined, including a US$242-million contract with the United States Department of Defense—the largest such computer-related government contract up to that date. In 1986, the company made headlines when it beat out IBM for a contract with the Internal Revenue Service to supply a portable computer. ZDS' SupersPort laptop was released in 1988 to high demand, and it soon cornered roughly a quarter of the entire American laptop market that year. The company reached a peak in terms of revenue in 1988, generating US$1.4 billion that year. The following year saw ZDS floundering in multiple ways, including a cancelled contract with the Navy and a botched bid to increase its consumer desktop sales. In late 1989, ZDS was purchased by Groupe Bull of France for between $511 million and $635 million.

Following the acquisition, ZDS moved from Michigan to Buffalo Grove, Illinois. In 1991, Enrico Pesatori took over ZDS and attempted to repair their relations with dealers while diversifying their product lineup and modes of sales. ZDS made a slow recovery into the early 1990s, helped along by a lucrative contract with the Pentagon in 1993. Pesatori was replaced that year with Jacques Noels of Nokia, who further diversified the company's lineup. ZDS' revenue steadily grew in both their North American and European markets in the beginning of 1994. The company was acquired by Packard Bell in February 1996, in a three-way deal which saw Groupe Bull and Japanese electronics conglomerate NEC increasing their existing stakes in Packard Bell. Later, NEC announced that they would acquire Packard Bell, merging it with NEC's global personal computer operations. ZDS continued as a brand of computer systems under the resulting merger, Packard Bell NEC, from 1996 until 1999, when Packard Bell NEC announced that they would withdraw from the American computer market.

History

Foundation and early success (1979–1985)

Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS) was founded in October 1979 following the US$64.5-million acquisition of the Heath Company from Schlumberger Limited by the Zenith Radio Company. The company's initial headquarters were located in Heath's own headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan. Edward J. Roberts, who joined the Zenith Radio Company in 1971, was named ZDS' first president. Heath was a manufacturer of microcomputers and do-it-yourself electronics kits, the latter sold under the Heathkit brand; meanwhile, Zenith Radio Company (later Zenith Electronics) had been long a market leader in the American electronics industry, particularly with radios and television sets.

ZDS' first computers were preassembled versions of Heathkit computers. As subsidiary of a television company, ZDS could obtain monitors at cost. Heath had a loyal fanbase comprising computing enthusiasts and scientific engineers by the time Zenith acquired the company in 1979. The first Heathkit computer, the H8, was released in 1977 and sold in kit form. It was built on Intel's 8080 processor and ran software on audiotape and punched tape (with the H10 puncher–reader). The H8's operating system, HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System), could only read hard-sectored 5.25-inch floppy diskettes. In around 1980, ZDS began selling systems sold with the hybrid Heath/Zenith branding; the CP/M operating system was adapted to the entirety of ZDS' computers under this branding scheme by 1981. The early Heath/Zenith computers (the H88, H89 and Z-89) were based on the Z80 processors and ran either HDOS or CP/M operating systems.

Long after products bearing only the Zenith name had accounted for the bulk of the company's sales, ZDS continued selling their computers in kit form under the Heathkit or Heath name—the equivalent of the ZDS Z-150 IBM PC compatible was the Heathkit H-150, for example. The company opened more Heathkit Electronic Centers while also selling through Zenith dealers and seeking corporate customers. The company also continued Heath's practice of publishing unusually clear product documentation, distributing schematics, and selling the source code to HDOS and other software in printed form.

ZDS introduced the Z-100, its first computer not based on a kit design and second 16-bit product after the H11 minicomputer, in 1982. Targeted at business professionals, it had both the Intel 8085 and 8088 microprocessors; five S-100 bus slots for expansion; and an integrated high-resolution graphics chip with color capability. For operating systems, it could boot into either Digital Research's CP/M-85 or Z-DOS, a modified OEM version of MS-DOS licensed from MS-DOS that possessed the latter's filesystem but which was not fully compatible on the API level with MS-DOS, leading to compatibility issues with certain applications. While lacking in the PC-compatibility department, the Z-100 proved popular as a bridge machine for CP/M developers who wanted to get a head start on DOS and x86 programming. Later machines in this Z-prefixed line (such as the Z-150 series, the Z-200 series, the Z-300 series, and the Z-400 series) were fully compatible with the IBM PC. The AT-based Z-200 in particular, while not touting many technical improvements over IBM's PC AT, was nonetheless praised for its sturdy construction.

ZDS avoided the retail consumer market, instead focusing on business and government customers, such as companies, universities, and government agencies. John Frank, ZDS' vice president of marketing, explained: "We'd like to have [retailers], but we don't need them". ZDS' president Donald Moffett in 1982 stated: "We have no expectations of being first or second in the desktop market". Regardless, in fiscal year 1984, ZDS sold 16 percent of the 37,000 computers that the United States government purchased, second to IBM's 27 percent. After a failed bid to sell their computer systems at college bookstores, ZDS found success in marketing to fraternities and sororities directly in 1985. By that year, ZDS was overall the second-largest PC-compatible company, after Compaq. ZDS' CEO that year, Robert Dilworth, attributed its success to recognizing, unlike other computer companies, that the PC compatible was a commodity with falling prices like televisions: "Basically, we move boxes". ZDS' 1985 revenue grew to $352 million, and in March 1986 The New York Times called the division's success one of Zenith Electronics' "proudest accomplishments", amid the parent company's losses in the television market against Japanese competition.

ZDS at that time believed government was a more important customer than consumers or even businesses. In October 1983, the United States Navy and Air Force awarded a $27-million computer contract to ZDS. In 1984 ZDS won a $100-million contract with the United States military for "eavesdrop-proof" computers compliant with the Tempest standard. In 1986 it won two other large contracts, one for portable computers for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and a $242 million contract—the largest computer contract the U.S. federal government had awarded up to that point—for 90,000 computers to the United States Department of Defense.

Continued success, faltering, and sale to Groupe Bull (1985–1991)

ZDS introduced a number of innovations in the personal computer industry throughout the 1980s. One unique feature of most ZDS' PC-compatible systems was the key combination , which would interrupt the running program and break into a machine-language monitor. This monitor program originated with the Heathkit H8 computer; PAM-8 (Panel Monitor-8), included in ROM, allowed the user to trace or resume program execution, change machine settings, run diagnostic routines, and boot from a specific device. ZDS' ZP-150 laptop, released in 1984, was an early entry in the first wave of laptops of the early 1980s. ZDS followed up the Z-150 with the heavier, less-elegant Z-138 portable computer in 1985. They quickly followed this up with the Z-160 portable, which featured pop-up 5.25-inch disk drives. Also in 1985, the company introduced the Z-148, one of the most inexpensive IBM PC-compatibles on the market at the time, with a suggested retail price of $2,200 (with typical resellers discounts lowering this figure substantially, according to InfoWorld). The Z-148 was kept inexpensive by its small footprint; one sacrifice was the lack of any ISA expansion slots.

The company's Z-171 portable was built into a lunchbox form factor. This computer was originally developed by Morrow Designs and sold as the Morrow Pivot II in May 1985. ZDS acquired the rights to co-manufacture the Pivot II rebadged as the Z-171 and unveiled the latter in November 1985. A version of the Z-171 with a electroluminecent-backlit LCD display, the Z-175, was the first battery-powered portable computer with a backlit display. ZDS shocked industry observers in early 1986 when it was awarded a contract to sell 20,000 Z-171s worth $27 million to the IRS, beating out IBM and their PC Convertible.

In 1987, Microsoft chose ZDS to be the first pack-in distributor of their variant of OS/2 1.0, co-developed with IBM; that same year, Microsoft developed a character-based windowing file manager for ZDS' all-in-one Eazy PC called MS-DOS Manager, a precursor to Microsoft's later DOS Shell. In 1988, the company released the SupersPort line of laptops and the TurbosPort 386 portable computer, the latter being one of the first computers to have a "paper-white" monochrome LCD, owing to the use of a special STN display technology and a cold-cathode backlight. The SupersPort proved wildly success for ZDS, with the company reportedly selling over 173,000 units, cornering between 23 and 25 percent of the entire laptop market at the time. Contracts to sell fleets of computers to the United States Air Force and the IRS further increased ZDS' status as a leading computer manufacturer. By 1988's end, the company grossed $1.4 billion in revenues. ZDS' success allowed them to sponsor the Full Members' Cup, a football competition in the United Kingdom, starting in 1989 until the latter's discontinuation in 1992.

The last year of the 1980s saw the company floundering, however. Revenues in the first quarter of 1989 fell roughly 41 percent compared to the previous year, dropping to $1.7 million. Its MinisPort subnotebook, which made use of a special 2-inch floppy disk format as the primary means of transferring data to and from the machine, sold more slowly than anticipated. Further, Unisys beat out ZDS in a $700-million bid to supply the military with desktop computer systems. The company soon after had a $534-million computer upgrade contract for the Navy cancelled by the General Services Administration. A ploy to boost sales of its desktop computers by requiring its laptop dealers to also sell their desktop models backfired, with an estimated 1,000 dealers across the United States pulling all ZDS products from their inventory in protest of this policy. After being dealt this blow, Zenith Electronics cut spending to ZDS' research and development operations in preparation for selling the subsidiary to the highest bidder. This had the effect of eliminating new product releases, causing sales to free fall as its existing offerings soon became obsolete. An interested buyer was found at the very end of the decade; in November 1989, Groupe Bull announced that they would acquire ZDS from Zenith Electronics for between $511 million and $635 million. The deal was finalized in December 1989.

Pesatori's tenure (1991–1993)

ZDS' workforce peaked in number in 1990 with 3,800 workers, 1,800 of which were from their St. Joseph, Michigan, headquarters. Under new ownership, the company relocated from Michigan to Buffalo Grove, Illinois, after leasing  of office space at a newly built 12-story office building at Lake-Cook Road and Milwaukee Avenue. ZDS retained their old St. Joseph headquarters, refactoring it into a full-on engineering facility and manufacturing plant for the company's desktop computers.

After shuffling its executive team in 1990, Enrico Pesatori was named the first permanent CEO of ZDS under Bull's ownership in January 1991. Tasked with correcting course and rehabilitating ZDS' public image, Pesatori spearheaded the creation of a new lineup of laptops and put an end to the requirement that dealers stock desktops as well as laptops. Pesatori's new team meanwhile increased the company's advertising budget by half and launched a new advertising campaign targeting business users. ZDS also continued to expand their distribution channels and renewed their relationship with ComputerLand. As a result, sales started to improve. The company increased their shipments from 194,000 units in 1990 to 228,000 units (down from 445,000 units in 1988). The company also increased their investments in research and development, with expenditures in 1991 being 25 percent higher than the previous year, this trend following apace for 1992. By the middle of 1992, ZDS had additional manufacturing plants in Santa Clara, California; Billerica, Massachusetts; and Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France.

ZDS remained the largest supplier of computers to the federal government into 1991. In November that year, they and several other large computer companies, including Apple, lost a bid to supply the Department of Defense with 300,000 desktop computers, the winning bid valuated at $1 billion split between rival manufacturer CompuAdd Corporation of Austin, Texas, and systems integrator Sysorex Information Systems of Falls Church, Virginia. ZDS however won a bid to supply the Pentagon with 300,000 desktops worth $740 million in September 1992, this time beating out CompuAdd and Sysorex. Although ZDS' bid was temporarily voided after the latter two companies raised suspicions that ZDS was financially unstable, ZDS won back the contract in May 1993 on judicial appeal.

In 1992, ZDS launched a revamp of their desktop PCs, laptops, and monitors. The redesign extended to their products' case designs, featuring sleek lines meant to instill a sense of modernity. These efforts culminated in the release of the Z-Series laptops in June 1992. The Z-Series were touted as the lightest laptops available at the time, with built-in networking capability and color LCDs. The Z-Lite, the company's second attempt at a subnotebook, was co-designed by Frog of Germany, featuring an 8.5-inch LCD while weighing only . ZDS themselves were commissioned to design and manufacture another company's product, the ThinkPad 300—IBM's second entry in their ThinkPad line of notebook computers.

The total sales for 1992 were estimated at $900 million—55 percent of which represented sales in Europe, and 40 percent of which represented sales from notebook models. While the company's overall sales slowly recovered, ZDS' retail market share continued to slide, decreasing from 3.4 percent in July 1991 to only 1 percent in July 1992. The company's officials cited a change in consumer purchasing behavior favoring superstore outlets (a sales channel in which ZDS had only a limited presence) as a reason for this decline. In an attempt to boost sales into 1993, ZDS restructured its field sales force and began focusing on direct sales to corporate accounts. In August 1992, after having poached CompuAdd executive Jerry Baldwin, ZDS launched the Z-Direct mail order catalog, mailing one million copies of its inaugural issue that year. The catalog offered desktop, server, and notebook products via a toll-free phone number. The catalog also included peripheral equipment from other manufacturers and software products from Microsoft, Novell, and Lotus Development. The company hoped that the direct sales approach would increase brand recognition and reach customers who were not targeted by other marketing channels.

Noels' tenure and final years (1993–1996)
Jacques Noels, formerly the head of Nokia Consumer Electronics, replaced Pesatori as CEO in January 1993. Pesatori meanwhile left to helm Digital Equipment Corporation's PC-compatible systems division. Under Noels' leadership, ZDS launched several new products, including the Z-Lite 425L, an upgraded version of their subnotebook featuring an i486SL processor clocked at 25 MHz; the Z-Notepad, a pen-enabled version of their Z-Note laptop; and the Z-Star V33VL series, a 486-based notebook PC line comprising three models, all featuring Cyrix's energy-conservant Cx486SLC microprocessor clocked at 33 MHz. ZDS also launched a new series of desktop PCs, the Z-Select 100 line, which came pre-installed with networking software compatible with Novell NetWare, Banyan VINES, and Microsoft LAN Manager. The Z-Select 100 was powered by a 25-MHz i486SX processor and featured 4 MB of RAM and a 170-MB hard drive. ZDS touted the power-saving capabilities of the Z-Select 100, including its idle power consumption of 60 watts and advanced power management capabilities, including user-definable time intervals on which the computer halts the processor to conserve power.

In 1993, Groupe Bull purchased a 19.9 percent stake in Packard Bell, then the fourth-largest PC seller in the United States (behind Apple, IBM, and Compaq), representing an undisclosed price. While Packard Bell had an overall market share in the United States of 37 percent, only five percent of this figure represented notebook sales—much lower than the industry average of roughly 20 percent. As part of the acquisition, ZDS agreed to provide Packard Bell with rebadged versions of its notebook and subnotebook PCs, eventually manufacturing for them the Packard Bell Statesman, released in October 1993. The two companies also agreed to collaborate on the design and production of future desktop PCs. ZDS reported a 30 percent increase in worldwide revenues by 1993's end, with North American revenues up 53 percent and European revenues up 22 percent. The number of units shipped also increased, with a rise of 89 percent in the US and 62 percent worldwide. ZDS by this point counted seven major distributors on its roster and had sales networks in over 30 countries.

In 1994, ZDS unveiled the Z-Stor line of wide area network products. The flagship product in the lineup was the Z-Stor Personal Server, a file server co-developed by the Desktop Workgroup Computing Initiative, a joint venture between ZDS and Novell. ZDS in 1994 also introduced the Z-Station 500, a desktop workstation, and the Z-Noteflex, a new line of notebooks. The Z-Station 500 touted improved power management, higher-specification graphics cards (implementing ATI's PCI-based Mach 32 card), and increased system performance. The Z-Noteflex meanwhile was designed to be modular, allowing users to swap the top housing of the laptop to switch between different display technologies (passive-matrix monochrome, passive-matrix color, and active-matrix, TFT color) and remove hard disk drives toollessly. The Z-Noteflex also possessed an internal VESA local bus, allowing expansion cards based on this architecture to be installed into the computer with the optional Flexshow docking station.

ZDS saw considerable growth in revenue in both their North American and European markets in the beginning of 1994. Comparing year-to-year first quarter profits between 1993 and 1994, there was an increase of 132 percent in North America and an increase of 42 percent in Europe. ZDS' annual sales revenues of roughly $1 billion made up around 40 percent of their Groupe Bull's total hardware revenues, according to a statement issued by the company. Furthermore, ZDS revenues were equally divided between North American and European markets, as well as between desktop and notebook products.

Acquisition by Packard Bell (1996)
In February 1996, Packard Bell acquired Zenith Data Systems from Groupe Bull, in a three-way deal which saw Groupe Bull and Japanese electronics conglomerate NEC increasing their existing stakes in Packard Bell. As a consequence of the merger, 570 jobs were eliminated from ZDS' plant in St. Joseph. Shortly after, in June 1996, NEC announced that they would acquire Packard Bell, merging it with NEC's global personal computer operations. The merger was finalized in July 1996; the resulting division became known as Packard Bell NEC, selling computer systems under both NEC and Packard Bell faceplates. Select ZDS employees moved to Packard Bell NEC's headquarters in Sacramento, California, and ZDS lived on as a brand for certain systems manufactured by Packard Bell NEC and marketed in the United States between 1996 and 1999. For a brief period, Packard Bell NEC was the largest PC manufacturer, in terms of units shipped, in the United States, with 15 percent of market share; it was also the third largest PC vendor in the world in terms of sales at the end of 1996. However, Packard Bell NEC's market share would soon slide, and the company between 1997 and 1998 posted losses totaling more than $1 billion. In 1999, NEC withdrew Packard Bell NEC from the American market, while keeping it in Europe. Acer Inc. of Taiwan eventually acquired Packard Bell in 2008.

References

External links

1979 establishments in Michigan
1996 disestablishments in Michigan
1989 mergers and acquisitions
1996 mergers and acquisitions
American companies established in 1979
American companies disestablished in 1996
Computer companies established in 1979
Computer companies disestablished in 1996
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer hardware companies
Former NEC subsidiaries
Groupe Bull
Heathkit
Packard Bell
St. Joseph, Michigan

Zenith Data Systems


Dyffryn Gardens, also spelt Duffryn Gardens, () is a collection of botanical gardens located near the villages of Dyffryn and St. Nicholas in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. The gardens were selected by the British Tourist Authority as one of the Top 100 gardens in the UK and are in the care of the National Trust. They are designated at Grade I, the highest grade, on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

History of the Dyffryn Estate

The Dyffryn Estate dates back to 640 A.D. when the Manor of Worlton (also known as Worleton), which included St Lythans and St Nicholas, was granted to Bishop Oudoceus of Llandaff.

In the 16th century the Manor of Worlton was rented under copyhold by the Button family, who are believed to have first settled at the manor at Dog Hill in Dyffryn. The family's next residence, Columbar, was thought to be built on the location of Dyffryn Gardens. The Button family occupied the estate for a number of generations, producing Admiral Thomas Button who become a notable early explorer.

The name of the Manor of Worlton was changed to the Manor of Dyffryn, St Nicholas in the 18th century when the Dyffryn Estate was sold to Thomas Pryce, who built the second building to be known as Dyffryn House, a Georgian manor, on the site in 1749.(The first house known as Dyffryn House is located in St David's Place, Goodwick and dates back to 1595.) Although no extensive work was undertaken to the grounds, Pryce did begin some additions, including the construction of the walled garden, dipping pools and some ornamental plantings.

In 1891 the Dyffryn Estate was sold to John Cory by the then owner, a banker named Henry Ellis Collins. Cory then began construction of the present house in 1893. Later, Thomas Mawson, a well-known landscape architect and first president of the Institute of Landscape Architecture, was commissioned to design a garden to complement the new house; landscaping began in 1894 and was completed in 1909.

After John Cory's death in 1910, the job of further developing the gardens fell to Cory's third son, Reginald, who had inherited the estate. Reginald was a leading figure in the Royal Horticultural Society and a keen horticulturalist and plant collector who during the early 1900s jointly sponsored several worldwide plant hunting expeditions. Many of the plants on display at Dyffryn exist as a direct result of these forays, the most outstanding being Acer griseum (Paper Bark Maple) grown from seed brought back from China by the famous plant hunter Ernest Wilson.

On Reginald's death in 1934, the Dyffryn Estate was passed to his sister Florence. On her death in 1937, the estate was bought by Sir Cennydd Traherne. In 1939 Sir Cennydd Traherne leased the Dyffryn House and Gardens to Glamorgan County Council, as a botanical garden on a 999-year lease. In 1973, the gardens were used as the venue to host a garden party to commemorate the dissolution of Glamorgan County Council. In 1995 Sir Cennydd Traherne died, and in 1999 his nephew Councillor Rhodri Llewellyn Traherne sold the freehold of Dyffryn House and Gardens to the Vale of Glamorgan for the sum of £300,000.

In 2000 Cadw awarded these gardens Grade II status in its register of landscapes, parks and gardens of special historical interest in Wales. The Grade I citation reads "The gardens at Dyffryn are the grandest and most outstanding Edwardian gardens in Wales. They are comparable to some of the most extravagant gardens of the period in Britain."

Dyffryn House and Gardens underwent restoration in 2006 with a £8 million grant, £6.15 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the Grade II listed Edwardian gardens have been restored to the original design drawn up by Thomas Mawson in 1904 for the coal baron John Cory.

The National Trust took over stewardship of Dyffryn House and Gardens on a 50-year lease from the Vale of Glamorgan Council in January 2013.

Dyffryn House

The present Dyffryn House was built in 1893–94 under the ownership of John Cory, by architect E.A. Lansdowne of Newport, and was one of the last large country manors to be built in Wales. A long narrow mansion, the architectural style is vaguely Second French Empire The main entrance, located on the north side of the building, is protected by a porte-cochere, which leads into a lofty hall. The windows looking out over the driveway from the Hall depict Elizabeth I at Tilbury. The hall also features the most notable of the manor's impressive chimneypieces; incorporating at its centre a late 17th-century marble cartouche of arms flanked by life-size wooden Mannerist figures of Ceres and Prudence. Other rooms of note include the Oak Room, whose chimneypiece is flanked by cross-legged cherubim, each with six wings. The drawing room and boudoir have Jacobean alabaster mantle-pieces.

Despite its grand features, the house was used as a police training centre, and up until 1996 a conference centre. In 2007, the Vale of Glamorgan Council appointed £1.4 million to repair and maintain Dyffryn House's walls and roof. As of 2012 the house is being extensively restored and was opened to the public in March 2013.

Today, Dyffryn Gardens is a visitor attraction open all year round, 363 days a year. The gardens are accessed via the admissions building, which also houses a shop and an attached tea-room. From here the gardens are divided into three main areas, the arboretum, Dyffryn House and its lawns and the Garden Rooms.

The eastern and largest section of the gardens contains the arboretum that begins with the kennel bank, leading to the rockery. The central section, which divides the arboretum in the east from the Garden Rooms to the west, contains Dyffryn House and its lawns, beginning with the house to the north extending southwards to the Vine Walk, a series of arches each containing a different species of vine. The two main lawns include the croquet lawn, closest to Dyffryn House, which runs east to west parallel to the main building, and the Great Lawn. The Great Lawn runs north–south and at its centre a longitudinal canal, which has at its centre a large bronze fountain. The fountain is in Chinese style and has a bronze Chinese Dragon wrapped around it; thought to be from the 1950s. The Great Lawn ends with a fountain pool, for which there is currently a fundraising drive to repair. The two bronze statues, Fujin and Raijin, Japanese Shinto gods of wind and lightning, that used to be here are now housed in the glass houses. At the southern end of the lawns is the Vine Walk, and Lavender Garden, the latter containing a red brick folly.

The final section of the gardens is the Garden Rooms, a series of terraced themed gardens. The "rooms" contain an Italian Terrace, Australasian and Mediterranean Gardens, each containing plants from their respective regions. Other areas include a physic garden, rose garden, reflecting pool and Pompeian gardens. The Pompeiian gardens, entered via an archway dated 1909, were originally inspired by Reginald Cory's trips to Italy.

Throughout the gardens are statues, many with a motif of people with animals. These include a life-size prone stone lion, a terracotta statue of a palm-bearing female, signed "E. Kuhse", (1881) of German origin and to the rear of the house outside the visitor centre is a large bronze of a mandarin riding a bull.

Lordship and Manor of Worlton

The Manor of Worlton (or Worelton) has existed since 640 AD when it was passed to the Bishop of Llandaff, who in 1913 transferred the ownership of the lordship and manor (also known the Manor of Dyffryn St Nicholas) to the University of Wales. In June 2000 the university, on behalf of the bishop, sold the ancient manorial lordship at auction.

See also

List of gardens in Wales

References

Biography

External links

   Dyffryn Gardens website
 www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Dyffryn Gardens and surrounding area
 BBC Wales feature on the gardens in autumn

Gardens in Wales
Botanical gardens in Wales
Gardens by Thomas Hayton Mawson
Arboreta in Wales
Tourist attractions in the Vale of Glamorgan
Country houses in Wales
Houses in the Vale of Glamorgan
Parks in the Vale of Glamorgan
Grade II* listed buildings in the Vale of Glamorgan
Grade II listed buildings in the Vale of Glamorgan
National Trust properties in Wales
Registered historic parks and gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan

Dyffryn Gardens


Jeffrey McDaniel (born 1967) is an American poet. He has published six books of poetry, most recently Holiday in the Islands of Grief (University of Pittsburgh Press). He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has been included in Ploughshares, The Best American Poetry 1994, The Best American Poetry 2010, The Best American Poetry 2019, and The New Young American Poets, as well as on the National Endowment for the Arts website. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

McDaniel received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1990, where he studied with Thomas Lux, Brooks Haxton, Kate Knapp-Johnson, Cornelius Eady, and Safiya Henderson-Holmes. In his senior year of college, McDaniel was in a weekly reading group with authors Joel Brouwer, Tessa Rumsey, and Marisa de los Santos, among others. A chapbook, The Boy Inside The Turtle, was published in 1989 by fellow student Gerry LaFemina.

McDaniel received an MFA from George Mason University in 1993, where he studied with C.K. Williams, Susan Tichy, and Carolyn Forche. In grad school, he was the poetry editor for the school's national literary magazine, Phoebe, in 1991–92, and the editor in 1992-93. He was also active in a student performance troupe, Poetry Theater (founded by Chris Carpenter), where grad students presented their poems in a theatrical context. In grad school, McDaniel first began publishing poems in magazines, including Ploughshares, Fine Madness, Exquisite Corpse, and Willow Springs. In his final year of grad school, he also got involved with the nascent poetry slam movement at the 15 Minutes Club in Washington DC. He was on a team (with Silvana Straw among others) to represent DC at the 1993 National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. He also represented Washington DC at the 1994 and '95 National Poetry Slams and Venice Beach (California) in the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas. McDaniel has not performed in a poetry slam since the late 1990s.

After grad school, McDaniel worked for DC WritersCorps, a poetry in the community project. Other DC WritersCorps members included DJ Renegade, Kenny Carroll, Joe Ray Sandoval, A, Van Jordan, Imani Tolliver, Brian Gilmore, and many other talented writers. From 1994-96, McDaniel co-hosted (with Silvana Straw) a monthly reading series at The Black Cat Club on 14th and T. Many talented writers performed there, including Henry Taylor, Carl Hancock Rux, Matt Cook, Crystal Williams, A.E. Stallings, and Jose Padua. During this time, McDaniel did a one-man show, Hunting For Cherubs, combining poetry, video, dance, and music, at the Washington Project for the Arts, produced by Ceridwen Morris.

McDaniel's first three books, Alibi School (1995), The Forgiveness Parade (1998), and The Splinter Factory (2002) were published by Manic D Press. In September 1996, he moved to the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He curated readings at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice Beach and taught poetry workshops at high schools throughout the city. From 1999-2001, he took a team of six high school poets (with the help of Derrick Brown) to Brave New Voices, the National Teen Poetry Slam.

Since 2001, he has been teaching creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

A compilation of selected poems, Katastrophenkunde, was translated into German by Ron Winkler and published in 2006.
In 2010, he was one of five judges for the National Book award in poetry.

He is currently in the process of writing a new poetry book titled 4,000 A.M. He lives in Cold Spring, New York.

Works
Alibi School - Manic D Press 1995.
The Forgiveness Parade - Manic D Press 1998.
The Splinter Factory - Manic D Press 2002.
The Endarkenment - University of Pittsburgh Press 2008.
Chapel of Inadvertent Joy - University of Pittsburgh Press 2013.
 Holidays in the Islands of Grief - University of Pittsburgh Press 2020.

References

External links
Jeffrey McDaniel's author page at Ploughshares
 Jeffrey McDaniel's poem "Return to El Perdido Mundo" in  Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts (25.1).
Jeffrey McDaniel at MySpace

1967 births
Living people
American male poets
American spoken word poets
21st-century American poets
21st-century American male writers

Jeffrey McDaniel


Bunker gear (also known as turnout gear, fire kit and incident gear) is the personal protective equipment (PPE) used by firefighters. The term is derived from the fact that the trousers and boots are traditionally kept by the firefighters bunk at the fire station to be readily available for use.

History

Historically, firefighters have not had access to the same level of protective clothing used today. Most fires were fought from the outside of buildings, and structures were rarely entered. Early in the history of firefighting, a firefighter's outer clothing was more for warmth and dryness than for protection from fire. In the early 19th century, felt caps were worn in various designs and were more for decoration than service; this early headgear did not provide any protection against flame or head injury but did keep water off the firefighter's face. The modern firefighter's helmet was developed in 1830 by luggage maker Henry Gratacap, who was also a volunteer firefighter in New York City. Gratacap recognized the need for a well-designed helmet that provided maximum protection to the wearer. This helmet is immediately recognizable today as the "New York" style of helmet, and little has changed in terms of its shape. The helmet had a brimmed front to affix a face shield, usually adorned with a company name and number. It featured eight rib sections on the dome for added rigidity and a long rear brim that channeled water away from the wearer's neck.

Firefighting trench coats, made of leather or canvas and later rubber, were the precursor to modern turnout jackets. Early coats had felt or wool liners to provide warmth in winter. These layers later developed into today's turnout gear's thermal and flame protection liners. Earlier rubber coats were much longer than today's modern turnout jackets, reaching a firefighter's mid-thigh. They wore long rubber boots called "three-quarter boots" above the firefighter's knees. This interface of the boot and coat left a significant protection gap against fire. This system has since been replaced by the modern combination of a jacket, pants with suspenders, and shorter rubber or leather boots, although some departments still wear the old gear style.

The combination of modern triple-layer turnout gear with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), personal alert safety system (PASS) device, and modern communications equipment is intended to provide comprehensive protection against smoke, heat, water, steam, flashovers, and even direct flame for a short time. Modern turnout jackets and pants are made of fire-retardant fabrics, mainly aramids such as Nomex and Kevlar or polybenzimidazole (PBI). The National Fire Protection Association publishes the requirements for fire protective clothing under NFPA 1971: Standard on Protective Ensembles for Structural Fire Fighting and Proximity Fire Fighting, which specifies "the minimum design, performance, safety, testing, and certification requirements for structural fire fighting protective ensembles and ensemble elements that include coats, trousers, coveralls, helmets, gloves, footwear, and interface components."

Station uniform

The first component of firefighting equipment is the uniform a firefighter wears around the station. Its purpose is to provide comfortable clothing that is not an obstruction when a firefighter must put on their turnout gear. Turnout gear is to be worn over the station garments during any call that a firefighter is called upon.

Another aspect of the station uniform is the station safety shoes, commonly called work boots. These shoes must be fitted with safety toes and puncture-resistant soles in most countries if the firefighter goes out on a call that does not require their turnout gear.

The United States adheres to NFPA 1975: Standard on Emergency Services Work Apparel. NFPA 1975's primary purpose is that no part of the uniform garment "ignite, melt, drip, or separate" when exposed to a heat of 500 °F for 5 minutes.

Protective ensemble

Turnout clothing includes trousers, suspenders, boots, and a jacket. Modern sets use a trouser and jacket combination. The advantage of this combination is overlapping coverage to create a protective envelope for the firefighter to operate in.

It has been noted that young children in dangerous circumstances like a building fire may be further frightened by the appearance of firefighters equipped in full turnout gear. Many fire departments have school presentations to familiarize children with firefighters and their arrival to ensure they will be calm and cooperative during emergencies.

Materials

According to NFPA 1971: Standard on Protective Ensembles for Structural Fire Fighting and Proximity Fire Fighting (and equivalent standards in other countries), all turnout clothing must have three components: an outer shell, a moisture barrier, and a thermal barrier. Separating these layers are pockets of air called "dead zones". These layers of the atmosphere and the three layers help further insulate the wearer from extreme fires. Turnout pants are typically outfitted with knee pads and leather cuffs.

The materials used for the layers in turnout trousers and coats vary but often include a Nomex or Kevlar composite. For example, the materials used by the Los Angeles City Fire Department, as found in their 2005 recruit handout, are as follows:
 Outer shell: Southern Mills, Advanced, Nomex/Kevlar blend in a "rip-stop weave" with water repellent finish.
 Thermal insulated layer: Southern Mills Caldura batten quilt material.
 Thermal and moisture barriers are sewn together for removal for cleaning, repair, and replacement from the outer shell.
 Moisture barrier: Breathe-Tex mixed with Nomex/Kevlar blend laminated cloth.

NFPA 1500: Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety, Health, and Wellness Program and similar standards mandate that firefighters wear upright protective collars and sleeves.

Trousers

Once the need arises for firefighting personal protective equipment to be worn, a firefighter must properly don the gear. Turnout trousers are the first article of clothing that a firefighter puts on. Suspenders worn with the turnout trousers should be the heavy-duty type to stand up against the heavy weights and rigorous activities they face. Most experienced firefighters carry various tools and equipment in their turnout trouser pockets and rope and hardware they may need during an emergency. When not in use, the turnout trousers are usually scrunched around the boots for efficient and fast access when needed. The firefighter may step into each boot and pull up the trousers and suspenders.

Coat

A turnout coat is the type of jacket typically worn by firefighters. Oversized pockets allow for carrying tools and equipment, and reflective safety stripes ensure that firefighters remain visible to each other. Protective coats usually have Velcro or zipper functions, enabling a firefighter to don this gear properly and efficiently. A storm flap covers this closure area and protects it against heat, damage, and loosening. Wristlets, 4-inch (according to NFPA 1500) 100% Nomex coverings along the distal end of the coat arms in with the thumb joint slips through, fit around the firefighter's hand and provides redundant protection where the skin may show between the glove and coat. They are designed to prevent burns to the wrist while preventing bunching and remaining flexible.

Overalls

Overalls are available in the same materials and specifications. Usually, an overall has a cord built around the waist to make it fit better. Because of its size, scrunching up the general around the boots is more challenging.

Boots

Firefighter turnout boots are usually sized like regular shoes and are made of rubber or leather with a steel toe insert. The shoes are slipped inside the legs of the trousers to maintain a barrier from the fire's heat. When the trousers and boots are not being actively used, the trousers fold down and out around the shins of the shoes, ready for quick access for the firefighter. Owing to the enormous number of potential hazards to the feet at a fire scene, turnout boots are required to be able to handle various risks. All shoes must be outfitted with safety toes and a puncture-resistant midsole plate to prevent puncture from sharp objects that may be stepped on. With such emphasis on the midsole plate, IFSTA has deemed that "if there is doubt about midsole protection, [one should go as far as to] X-ray the boot."

Helmet

The fire helmet's first function was to shed water, but today, it is first and foremost designed to protect a firefighter from falling debris and injury to the head while fighting a fire. The secondary job of the fire helmet is to protect from heat and burns to the head. It provides electrical, warmth, and steam burn protection, a hard shell, and in some types of helmets, goggles, a face shield, or Bourkes, a two-piece short folding shield that covers the eyes. In the media, these are often seen unfolded. All three protect the firefighter's eyes during rescue and extrication operations. Fire helmets are constructed of various materials, including non-conductive materials for protection against electrical currents, carbon fiber and plastic combination for a lightweight design for comfort, and a Kevlar lining for strength and security. More traditional US fire helmets are made out of leather.

The design of helmets varies from fire service to fire service and depends on the service or department's requirements. Some helmets are fitted with a face guard or shield to protect the firefighter's face against heat, dust, water, and debris when working on a rescue or extraction call and performing fire exposure protection. In the case of exposure protection, the shield works better because it keeps more heat from the firefighter's face, but the goggles give more eye protection in extraction and rescue ops.

There are four essential components to firefighting helmets:

 Helmet shell: Well-balanced, lightweight, and designed to provide maximum protection. It consists of a front brim (which offers protection to the eyes and facial area), a rear brim (which protects the neck from debris and water run-off), and raised top (which provides stability from impact from above).
 Impact ring: A 3/8" thick sponge rubber ring to absorb impact energy.
 Helmet liner: A high-density plastic liner made of fire-retardant cotton and Nomex; completely adjustable; nape strap adjusts to cradle the occipital portion of the head firmly.
 Chin strap: A 3/4" wide, black nylon with Velcro on one end, leather-backed "postman" side buckle. The leather helps protect the skin of the cheek from the metal buckle. Previous types of helmets had been constructed of a steel outer shell with a ribbed construction for extra strength and compressed cork with a lacquer applied to the outer face of it. The design and shape of the helmet are intended to redirect water and debris from the head and neck area. It also prevents head or neck injury to the firefighter in the event of falling debris.

In Europe and some Europe-oriented countries, helmet designs vary from the U.S. designs in that they are moving towards a style without brims. The pilot-style helmets have a bill at the front of the helmet and a shape that covers more of the head. The neck is protected by a combination of a Nomex (or similar material) flash hood and a foil-faced neck curtain connecting to the helmet's rear. In most designs, the Nomex fabric also protects the area around a SCBA facepiece and the front of the neck. A commonly used helmet is the F1 helmet, although several other designs like the Dräger HPS Helmet are in use.

These helmets tend to have in-built face protection (visors) and eye protection that swivel into the helmet's shell for protection.

EN 443:1997 (Helmets for firefighters) specifies the properties demanded for protection, comfort, and durability. There are optional specifications to cater to national requirements. The new EN 443-2008 now replaces the EN 443-1997.

Flash hood/Nomex hood

When helmets do not provide built-in protection for the ears, neck, and part of the face, firefighters wear a protective firefighting hood. These are fitted and designed to protect the firefighter's ears, neck, and face details that the SCBA mask does not cover.

They are designed to the guidelines set by NFPA 1975. Cal/OSHA Title #8 also has regulations in California. They are made of Nomex Knit Fabric which weighs 6 ounces per square yard; they are often double-ply with only one seam running from the top center of the face opening, over the top, and down the bottom of the bib. The Nomex Knit, which is standard, is why they are commonly referred to as Nomex hoods. First, the hood is tucked into the collar. The SCBA mask is then donned, and the hood is pulled over the face seal to cover any exposed skin.

Hand protection

Many types of hand protection are available to firefighters today, the most common being the work glove and the structural firefighting glove.

Work gloves are a must for all fire services. They are used when required, but firefighting gloves are not. They allow better mobility to perform various functions, from relaying hose beds to vehicle maintenance. Work gloves are usually made of leather or a leather-like material.

Extrication gloves are similar in design and appearance to auto mechanic gloves. However, they are made of a heavier rip-proof and puncture-resistant material such as Kevlar while still lightweight enough to allow manual dexterity to operate rescue equipment and sometimes sufficient to take a victim's pulse. These are used in urban search and rescue, vehicle extrication, and related applications but are not rated for firefighting.

For an actual working fire, structural firefighting gloves must be worn. Structural gloves are usually the last piece of protective equipment to don because the fingers' free dexterity is required to perform functions such as correctly placing an SCBA mask on and accurately tightening a helmet strap. The gloves fit over the wristlets and under the distal part of the coat sleeve, ensuring full enclosure of the latter arm. Gloves are designed to protect from extreme heat and various penetrating objects and to allow dexterity. Usually, the latter is sacrificed to give adequate protection from heat and sharp objects. Unlike leather gloves, new gloves are more lightweight and don't lose their talent when they dry after becoming wet.

Variations

Proximity suit

Firefighters wear several other related types of protective clothing, which are not usually called turnout gear:

Proximity gear or a fire proximity suit is turnout gear with an outer layer of heat-reflecting metallic material, used in firefighting applications of extreme heat such as aircraft fires and some chemical fires.

Hazmat suit

Hazmat suits are designed to prevent the wearer from coming into contact with hazardous materials. Class D is a work uniform with a face shield, respirator, apron, and gloves. All other levels are worn with structural firefighter PPE to a varied degree. The highest level is A consisting of a gastight suit overtop of SCBA and turn-out gear.

See also

 Firefighter's helmet

References

Further reading

 NFPA 1500, "Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety, Health, and Wellness Program"
 NFPA 1971, "Standard on Protective Ensemble for Structural Firefighting."
 NFPA 1975, "Standard on Station/Work Uniforms for Fire Fighters."

External links

 Statue of Liberty Fire Brigade
 Examples of Fire Helmet Fronts

Firefighting equipment

Bunker gear


John Purdell (July 8, 1959 – July 10, 2003) was an American musician and  multi-platinum rock music record producer who is credited on such albums as Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tears (1991) and Dream Theater's Awake (1994). He was born in San Diego and raised in Los Angeles. His father John Purdell (senior) (British) and mother Arrie Purdell (American) were both captains in the Salvation Army. He graduated from Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, California in 1977.

Aside from being the producer of a number of acclaimed albums from such artists as Ozzy Osbourne, Abandon Shame, Poison, L.A. Guns, Dream Theater, Kix, Alice Cooper, Cinderella, Tangier, Heart, Ted Nugent and Demolition Pit, he toured over the years as keyboard player and singer for artist like Rick Springfield, Quiet Riot, the Lou Gramm Band, Cinderella and Foreigner. Purdell, who was splitting his time between the studio and the road at the time of his death, produced Ozzy Osbourne's best-selling album No More Tears (1991), where John co-wrote the title song, and he also penned the lyrics to three songs on Osbourne's album Ozzmosis (1995).

In 1997, Purdell founded the production company Three Wishes Inc with broadcasting executive Bill Flowers and Korean superstar Honey. The three worked with and produced some of rock's top bands. Purdell and Flowers also formed the independent record label Jackal Records in Los Angeles along with famed Capitol Records executive Frenchy Gautier, who was responsible for artists like David Bowie and Jimmy McKeever, a mastering engineer at Bernie Grundman Mastering Studio in Hollywood. McKeever mastered for Michael Jackson. The first release on the Jackal label was John Purdell's Hindsight. The first song released on Purdell's album was "Better Way to Die", which made it to the top of the adult contemporary charts.

Death
While on tour with Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm, Purdell was rushed to a hospital before a show in Quebec City, Canada.  He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a few months before and was flying home to Las Vegas for treatments twice weekly, but the cancer had already metastasized, spreading throughout his body.  Purdell died two days after his 44th birthday. His wife Eun Joo Purdell, his father John Purdell, Sr, his business partner Bill Flowers and friend Chris Burroughs were by his side when he died in Quebec City.  His ashes were spread over Niagara Falls, where he planned to vacation after the tour.

Discography
 Hindsight (1998)

Credits
(partial list)
 Quiet Riot, QR III (1986) - co-producer, keyboards
 Britny Fox,  Bite Down Hard (1991) - Produced, Engineered & Mixed with Duane Baron
 Ozzy Osbourne, No More Tears (1991) - co-producer, co-wrote title track
 Foreigner, The Very Best ... and Beyond - co-producer, keyboards and background vocals
 Life, Sex & Death "Silent Majority (1992) - Produced, Engineered & Mixed with Duane Baron
 Heart, Desire Walks On (1993) - co-producer, keyboards and background vocals
 Alice Cooper, The Last Temptation (1994) - keyboards on three songs
 Cinderella, Still Climbing (1994) - co-producer
 Dream Theater, Awake (1994) - co-producer, backing vocals on "The Silent Man"
 Ozzy Osbourne, Ozzmosis (1995) - co-wrote "Perry Mason", "Old L.A. Tonight" and "Tomorrow"

External links
 Profile from Verdugo Hills High School

1959 births
2003 deaths
Musicians from San Diego
Record producers from California
Deaths from cancer
20th-century American musicians
Cinderella (band)
20th-century American keyboardists
Verdugo Hills High School alumni
Musicians from Los Angeles

John Purdell