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<br /> <br />injuries in those areas. <br />Observers in Estes Park said the area <br />was hit with rains nearly every day <br />during the week preceding the disaster. <br />And the final downpour "was like the <br />straw which broRe the camel's back." <br />No heavy flooding was reported in Estes <br />Park. <br />The tragedy recalled the "once.in.a. <br />hundred-years" storm which struck <br />Rapid City, South Dakota, on June 9, <br />1972. Then, as in the Big Thompson <br />flood, torrents of rain measuring up to <br />14 inches triggered flash flooding which <br />caused more than $100 million in <br />property damage and killed more than <br />200. <br /> <br />26 <br /> <br />In that disaster, moist air was riding <br />easterly clouds and as the air rose, the <br />moisture condensed and the rains <br />came-and stayed-because there was <br />little high altitude winds to push the <br />storm system away from the area. <br />Although the thunderstorm activity <br />in an area which has had its share of <br />weather quirks was not unusual, the <br />combination of factors involved that <br />spring day in South Dakota produced <br />"long odds" on what happened. <br />"Once in a hundred years" would the <br />weather parameters stage a repeat, was <br />the theory advanced by an hydrologist. <br />Now, perhaps, Coloradoans can rest <br />easy for another 100. <br /> <br />Graphic tesllmony to the terrible power <br />of the flood which decimated a 20-mlle <br />stretch of some of Colorado's most <br />scenic landscape. In the photo above, a <br />panorama of destruction is framed by <br />the river and trees: a house tilted <br />crazily, its roof supports gone; an <br />overturned vehicle, right foreground; <br />and masses of debris clumped along <br />the river bank. In the photo on the page <br />facing, boiling water crashes around <br />the wall of a house, left behind <br />curiously intact, while the rest of the <br />structure was carried away. <br />