After storms blew across the area on Sunday, tens of thousands of festivalgoers at Burning Man remained stranded in the Nevada desert as authorities looked into a possible death and attempted to establish evacuation routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.
The counterculture festival’s organizers prohibited vehicles from entering, so people made their way through the muck while many went barefoot or had plastic bags over their feet. The partygoers were advised to stay put and conserve food, drink, and other resources. A handful were able to walk several miles to the closest town or find a ride there, but the majority stayed camped out in the hopes that roads would open as soon as Monday.
Celebrity DJ Diplo shared a video of themselves inside the back of a fan’s pickup truck on Instagram on Saturday night. He claimed that prior to getting a ride, they had to walk six kilometres through muck.
Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, claimed to have spent hours walking on the side of the road while holding out his thumb.
Nearly 80,000 artists, singers, and activists annually attend the counterculture meeting in the Black Rock Desert, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno, and they spend tens of millions of dollars there. The festival, which resembles Mardi Gras and combines wilderness camping having avant-garde performances, normally lasts for a week and stresses self-sufficiency, with most attendees bringing their own food, water, and other supplies.
The festival is used to disruptions. Due to dust storms in 2018, festival gates had to be temporarily stopped. During the pandemic, the event had to be completely canceled twice.
It was tough to walk or even cycle about Burning Man on Sunday, but those who stayed on Sunday spoke of a tenacious community getting the most of the muddy conditions. photographs of people dancing, splashing in the manmade lakes, or posting photographs of themselves coated in muck were common.
Theresa Galeani, who is currently at Burning Man and intends to stay there for the remainder of the week, said, “Honestly, we’re having a terrific time.
We have not experienced any negativity or difficult moments, she claimed. Some of the folks are without food or water because they were meant to leave a few days ago. However, I am a planner, so I looked around and discovered extra food and drink. For humans, there is more than enough space. We simply need to deliver it to everyone.
Scott London, a photographer from Southern California who was at his 20th Burning Man and recently published a book about the event, “Burning Man: Art On Fire,” spent a large portion of Saturday stomping through the five square mile festival grounds without shoes. Since no vehicles were allowed on the site, supplies could not be brought in, and most individuals were unable to leave, he claimed that logistics posed the biggest obstacle.
“Our spirits are good, even though we are a little messy and muddy. The celebration is still happening,” he added, adding that the travel restrictions gave him a chance to observe Burning Man from a perspective that many of us don’t get to.
In contrast to yesterday, when it seemed like an empty playground, he continued, “it’s usually very crowded with art cars, bikes, and people all over the place.”
Photographer Rebecca Barger, from Philadelphia, arrived to her first Burning Man on August 26 and plans to stay until the very end.
Barger declared, alluding to the wooden figure and building that are customarily set ablaze during the final two nights of the event, “I’m not leaving until both ‘The Man’ and ‘The Temple’ burn.
Since the trucks that usually come to the site to regularly clean up the portable toilets haven’t been able to get there since Friday’s storms, she said one of the major worries has been the lack of toilet alternatives. Truck cleaning, according to some partygoers, resumed on Sunday.
Barger claims that she placed a plastic bag over each of her shoes before covering each bag with a sock to prevent her shoes from becoming enmeshed in the muddy clay. Some people are barefoot only.
Everyone has just adjusted, offering food and coffee while sharing RVs for sleeping, according to Barger. “I danced for hours in foot-deep clay to incredible DJs.”
Longtime Burning Man participant Ed Fletcher from Sacramento arrived in Black Rock City about a week ago to begin setting up. He and his fellow campers created a party and “danced the night away” in their muddy shoes until it started to rain.
One of the guiding concepts of Burning Man, he said, is radical self-reliance. The desert will make an effort to kill you in some way.
While the investigation was ongoing, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office provided minimal details, including the identification of the dead or the alleged cause of death, other than to confirm that a death occurred during the event.
The festival is designed to withstand adverse situations, such as flooding, according to the organizers, who urged participants to maintain their composure on their website. They claimed that on Saturday night, cellphone trailers would be dropped in a number of spots, and that the internet would also be momentarily made available overnight. Additionally, shuttle buses were planned to transport visitors from Gerlach, the closest town and an eight-kilometer walk from the venue, to Reno.
“The Burning Man community is made up of people who are willing to help one another. The event’s organizers stated in a statement, “We have come here knowing that this is a place that we can bring everything we require for survival. We are all adequately prepared for a weather event like this as a result of this, I believe.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is in charge of the Black Rock Desert wherein the festival is taking place, has said that vehicle gates won’t open for the duration of the event, which started on August 27 and was supposed to finish Monday.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, John Asselin, advised festival attendees to return home so that emergency vehicles and other cars could use the roads. He reported witnessing “a steady stream” of cars departing the festival grounds.
“People are getting out,” he declared.
According to the National Weather Service in Reno, it is estimated that more than half an inch of rain fell at the event site on Friday. Rainfall of at least another half an inch is predicted on Sunday.
According to The Reno Gazette Journal, festival organizers began limited ice sales and prohibited all vehicle traffic at the expansive event grounds, making it impossible to maintain portable restrooms.
The entry to the celebration was still locked, according to officials, as of late Saturday. It was also unclear whether attendees would be allowed to leave the venue. Except for emergency vehicles, driving is prohibited, and the organizers claimed they didn’t yet know when the roads will “be dry enough for RVs or vehicles to navigate safely.” However, they were hopeful that trucks may leave by Monday night if the weather improved.
The revelations were made just before the annual event’s grand finale, which was Saturday night’s planned burning of a huge wooden effigy. All fires have been postponed for the time being, organizers announced late on Saturday.