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<br />10 <br /> <br />hypotheses dealing with warning response is found in Appendix B. <br /> <br /> <br />Following the Big Thompson flood, a wide range of newspaper <br /> <br /> <br />articles and official agency reports were issued. The Denver Post, <br /> <br /> <br />Rocky Mountain News, Loveland Daily Herald and Fort Collins Coloradan <br /> <br /> <br />carried many articles which dealt with actions taken by survivors and <br /> <br /> <br />victims. State and local agencies also published reports on the flood. <br /> <br /> <br />An annotated bibliography of reports on the Big Thompson flood by <br /> <br /> <br />Thomas E. Downing is included as Appendix A. From these sources it <br /> <br /> <br />was possible to draw up a set of hypotheses on how people behaved and <br /> <br /> <br />what contributed to that behavior. These are summarized in Table 2, <br /> <br /> <br />which charts the relationships between the possible actions and survival, <br /> <br /> <br />and the relationships between different influential variables and specific <br /> <br /> <br />acti ons taken. <br /> <br />METHOD <br /> <br />This study sought to learn about the behavior patterns of the full- <br />time residents, the seasonal residents and the tourists who were in the <br />canyon at the time of the flood. <br />Sample <br />The sample consists of the groups of individuals or "response units" <br />existent during the flood. A "group" in this context indicates a person <br />or set of persons who made a decision to take an action during the flood. <br />This mode of analysis was seen to be the most logical in light of the <br />research by Drabek which shows that people respond to warnings and threats <br />not as isolated individuals but as members of groups. Thus, one person <br />traveling alone through the canyon was considered a "group" as was a <br />set of persons who happened to be caught on the same stretch of road and <br />