Wow. This taken from an AP story:

Sun Aug 3, 9:48 PM ET

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - A man believed to have died in a Colorado flood in 1976 has been found living in Oklahoma.

Sixty-three-year-old Darrell Johnson told the Fort Collins Coloradoan for a story Friday that he didn't know he had been counted among the 144 victims of the Big Thompson Canyon flood until a resident called him last year.

Barb Anderson said residents didn't want his name on a memorial plaque without proof he was dead.

Johnson and his family had decided to leave their shabby cabin the morning of the flood after just one night. A few hours later, the resort was washed away.

How Johnson ended up on the victims list remains a mystery.

He now directs funerals in Oklahoma City and acknowledges he was lucky to get the bad cabin.

The day after the Big Thompson flood, one of my fellow graduate students mentioned "You know, if you wanted to disappear, this flood would be a great opportunity. Just leave a note saying you were going hiking in the canyon, and no one would ever look for you anyplace else when you didn't come back."

I think the stress of his PhD dissertation was getting to him.

But no, his name wasn't Darrell.

And have I ever mentioned, if I had stopped to investigate all the water backed up on the shoulder of the interstate that next morning, instead of hurrying on to get to my study site by sunrise, I may have discovered several of the bodies? Before some emergency crews even knew there had been a flood?

Or that I had been out hiking in that storm the evening before, watching it bury itself in the mountains.

Hell of a storm. Even when it was out in the prairie.