{"id":31950,"date":"2023-09-03T18:42:09","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T00:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/burning-man-flooding-strands-tens-of-thousands\/"},"modified":"2023-09-04T00:42:09","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T00:42:09","slug":"burning-man-flooding-strands-tens-of-thousands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/burning-man-flooding-strands-tens-of-thousands\/","title":{"rendered":"Burning Man flooding strands tens of thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An
An overview of Burning Man festival in Black Rock, Nevada, on Aug. 28. (Maxar Technologies)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. \u2013 An unusual late-summer storm turned a weeklong counterculture fest into a sloppy mess with tens of thousands of partygoers stuck in foot-deep mud and with no working toilets in the northern Nevada desert. But some Burning Man revelers said Sunday that their spirits remained unbroken.<\/p>\n

Organizers closed the festival to vehicles after one death was reported. Officials provided no details of the fatality.<\/p>\n

The annual gathering in the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances. Disruptions are part of the event\u2019s recent history: Organizers had to temporarily close entrances to the festival in 2018 due to dust storms, and the event was twice canceled altogether during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

More than a half an inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain fell at the festival site on Friday, disrupting this year\u2019s festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a little bit dirty and muddy but spirits are high. The party still going,\u201d said Scott London, a Southern California photographer, adding that the travel limitations offered \u201ca view of Burning Man that a lot of us don\u2019t get to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than half an inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain and possibly close to 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) fell this weekend in parts of northwest Nevada, which includes the area where the Burning Man festival was being held, said Mark Deutschendorf, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.<\/p>\n

For the Reno area, which is about 141 miles (227 km) south of the festival, the average rainfall for the whole month of September would be 0.21 inches (0.53 centimeters), Deutschendorf said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready, everywhere from Reno up to the Burning Man area, Black Rock, we\u2019ve already exceeded that \u2014 and it\u2019s only three days into the month,\u201d he said. Rainfall for the area around the festival was ending on Sunday, he said.<\/p>\n

The road closures came just before a large wooden effigy was supposed to have been burned Saturday night. Organizers said that all burning had been postponed, and authorities were working to open exit routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n

Officials said late Saturday they didn\u2019t yet know when the roads would \u201cbe dry enough for RVs or vehicles to navigate safely,\u201d but they were hopeful vehicles could depart by late Monday if weather conditions improved.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he is aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House is in touch with local officials. He doesn\u2019t know the cause of the death, Biden said.<\/p>\n

With their party closed to motorized traffic, attendees trudged through mud, many barefoot or with plastic bags on their feet. Revelers were urged to conserve supplies of food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.<\/p>\n

A few, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.<\/p>\n

Celebrity DJ Diplo posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and comedian Chris Rock riding in the back of a fan\u2019s pickup truck. He said they had walked six miles through the mud before hitching a ride.<\/p>\n

\u201cI legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,\u201d wrote Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.<\/p>\n

The event is remote on the best of days and emphasizes self-sufficiency \u2014 meaning most people bring in their own food, water and other supplies.<\/p>\n

Those who remained Sunday described a resilient community making the most of the mucky conditions: Many posted selfies of themselves covered in mud, dancing or splashing in the makeshift lakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not witnessed any negativity, any rough times,\u201d organizer Theresa Galeani said. \u201cSome people \u2026 were supposed to leave a few days ago, so they\u2019re out of water or food. But I am an organizer, so I went around and found more water and food. There is more than enough here for people. We just have to get it to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

London, the southern California photographer who was attending his 20th Burning Man and just published a book on the festival, \u201cBurning Man: Art On Fire,\u201d spent much of Saturday walking barefoot across the site, which is about 5 square miles. He said that the biggest challenge was logistics because no vehicles could traverse the site, supplies could not be brought in and most people could not leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually it\u2019s very crowded with art cars, bikes and people all over the place. But yesterday it was like an abandoned playground,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Barger, a photographer from Philadelphia, arrived at her first Burning Man on Aug. 26 and was determined to stick it out through the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not leaving until both \u2018The Man\u2019 and \u2018The Temple\u2019 burn,\u201d Barger said, referring to the wooden effigy and wooden structure that are traditionally torched during the event\u2019s last two nights.<\/p>\n

She said one of the biggest concerns has been the lack of toilet options because the trucks that normally arrive to clean out the portable toilets multiple times a day haven\u2019t been able to reach the site since Friday\u2019s rainstorm. Some revelers said trucks had resumed cleaning on Sunday.<\/p>\n

To prevent her shoes from getting stuck in the muddy clay, Barger says she put a plastic bag over each of her shoes and then covered each bag with a sock. Others were just barefoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,\u201d Barger said. \u201cI danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Fletcher of Sacramento, a longtime Burning Man attendee, arrived in Black Rock City over a week ago to start setting up. When the rain hit, he and his campmates threw a party and \u201cdanced the night away\u201d in their muddy shoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cRadical self-reliance is one of the principles of Burning Man,\u201d he said. \u201cThe desert will try to kill you in some way, shape or form.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pershing County Sheriff\u2019s Office did not release the identity of the deceased person or the suspected cause of death but said it is being investigated.<\/p>\n

On their website, organizers encouraged participants to remain calm and suggested that the festival is built to endure conditions like the flooding. They said cellphone trailers were being dropped in several locations Saturday night and that they would be briefly opening up internet overnight. Shuttle buses were also being organized to take attendees to Reno from the nearest town of Gerlach, a walk of about five miles (eight kilometers) from the site.<\/p>\n

The event began on Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert, where the festival was held.<\/p>\n

John Asselin, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, said he had seen \u201ca steady stream\u201d of vehicles leaving the festival site.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are getting out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities are investigating 1 death at Nevada site<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31950"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}