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TENS OF THOUSANDS of partygoers at the Burning Man festival in the northern Nevada desert are stuck in mud a foot deep in places with no working toilets following an unusual late-summer storm.
Organisers closed the festival to vehicles after one death was reported, with officials yet to provide details on the fatality.
The annual gathering in the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles 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’s recent history. Organisers had to temporarily close entrances to the festival in 2018 due to dust storms, and the event was twice cancelled altogether during the pandemic.
More than half an inch of rain and possibly close to one inch fell this weekend in parts of north-west Nevada, which includes the area where the Burning Man festival was being held, according to the US National Weather Service in Reno.
Fear set in among some attendees desperate to flee the muddy site.
“I got scared with what happens when so many people run out of toilet paper and water and food, so I felt I had to get out,” Pascale Brand, a 40-year-old who arrived from the Netherlands, told AFP.
Brand said she had been “crying a lot,” before deciding on Sunday that “I am leaving no matter what.”
She got a seat in a neighbor’s vehicle and they made it down a muddy road without any problems.
“There were people yelling at you, ‘You can’t leave… Go back! The gates are closed,’” she said, but the vehicle made it past an unmanned gate, and to a paved road.
“I felt like I was breaking out of something,” Brand said.
Others made the strenuous journey on foot.
“It was an incredibly harrowing six-mile (10 kilometer) hike at midnight through heavy and slippery mud, but I got safely out,” lawyer Neal Katyal said on social media.
Neal Katyal / Twitter
Neal Katyal / Twitter / Twitter
For the Reno area, which is about 141 miles south of the festival, the average rainfall for the whole month of September would be just 0.21in, meteorologist Mark Deutschendorf said.
He added: “Already, everywhere from Reno up to the Burning Man area, Black Rock, we’ve already exceeded that – and it’s only three days into the month.”
Rainfall for the area around the festival was ending on Sunday, he said.
The road closures came just before a large wooden effigy was supposed to have been burned on Saturday night. Organisers said that all burning had been postponed, and authorities are working to open exit routes by the end of the Labour Day weekend.
Officials said late on Saturday they did not yet know when the roads would “be dry enough for RVs or vehicles to navigate safely”, but they were hopeful vehicles could depart by late on Monday if weather conditions improved.
US 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. Biden said he did not know the cause of death.
With their party closed to motorized traffic, attendees trudged through mud, many barefoot or with plastic bags on their feet. Revellers were urged to conserve supplies of food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.
A few, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.
Celebrity DJ Diplo posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and comedian Chris Rock riding in the back of a fan’s pickup truck. He said they had walked six miles through the mud before hitching a ride.
“I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,” wrote Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.
The event is remote on the best of days and emphasises self-sufficiency – meaning most people bring in their own food, water and other supplies.
Those who remained on 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.
“We have not witnessed any negativity, any rough times,” organiser Theresa Galeani said. “Some people … were supposed to leave a few days ago, so they’re out of water or food. But I am an organiser, 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.”
Ed Fletcher of Sacramento, a long-time 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 “danced the night away” in their muddy shoes.
“Radical self-reliance is one of the principles of Burning Man,” he said. “The desert will try to kill you in some way, shape or form.”
On their website, organisers encouraged participants to remain calm and suggested that the festival is built to endure conditions like the flooding.
They said mobile phone trailers were being dropped in several locations on Saturday night and that they would be briefly opening up internet access overnight. Shuttle buses are also being organised to take attendees to Reno from the nearest town of Gerlach, a walk of about five miles from the site.
The event began on August 27 and was scheduled to end on Monday, according to the US Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert, where the festival was held.
John Asselin, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, said he had seen “a steady stream” of vehicles leaving the festival site.
“People are getting out,” he said.
With reporting by AFP
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Well I suffer with a rare form of migraine that also affects the muscles in my body. I’ve had numerous medications and have been hospitalised to get nerve blockers in the back of my head. My father died from a massive heart attack and my mother suffered with mini strokes so for me this article is quite scary to read. For anyone who has never suffered with Migraine get down on your knees and count your lucky stars.
@Linda Hegarty: Mine is almost like stroke like: Left side of my body goes numb, My speech goes, I can’t see out my left eye, and the pain in my head is something that I can’t explain
Well that’s certainly true. My late father suffered badly with migraine, he went on to have several heart attacks and a bypass etc. While my migraines aren’t as bad or frequent as they used to be I’ve had 3 cardiac arrests and the associated problems that brings.
@Boyne Sharky: I am sorry to read about your late father and your health problems.
I never would have thought migrane would be connected in any way. Interesting study.
Migraines are caused by misalignment of the upper cervical vertebrae. Usually the condial or facet joints of C1 and the Oxiput.
I have been in practice for over 33 years as a Spinologist and have found that appropriate manipulation of these vertebrae gets rid of migraines in almost all cases.
My theory is that the misalignment causes pressure on nerves or the brain stem which in turn causes muscles to contract around the veins . That causes restrictions to the flow of blood from the head so pressure builds up in the head.
This pressure is without doubt the cause of many of what we consider “normal” disorders in the head. Migraine is only one of them. Others are ; Brain Hemmorage. Sinuses. Vertigo. Neuralgia. Bad Temper. Stress. Adhd and others.
@Brian Moore: Spinology?? Is that like witchery?
@Brian Moore: Is that a common held view in the medical profession as its the first time I’ve heard this?
@Annette Curtin: Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise.
@Mark Broadley: The medical profession dont believe the facet joints go out of alignment but then it was believed the world was flat. Results are what counts.
@Brian Moore: some quackology you learn in a one year course is probably the answer for sure Brian.
@Brian Moore: I’d say your Spinology is as usefull as rhino horn or dragons breath. A two hour course on the internet and a certificate with a gold star cos you got ten out of ten on the test.
@Brian Moore: Ok thanks. When you say it gets rid of migraines in most cases, does this include the whole thing? ie the aura that proceeds the severe headache? thanks
@Brian Moore: What results king wizard Brian?
@Brian Moore: Absolute nonsense. Medical science may not be able to pinpoint the exact cause of migraines, but it can certainly narrow down what doesn’t cause it – and top of that list is spinology.
Are you serious? Your theory? You seriously believe misaligned upper cervical vertebrae causes bad temper (you don’t know my wife), stress(I think you may be a cause yourself) brain hemmorage (you don’t think weakened blood vessels may play a part) This sounds like another of those neo, fad, religious type things where any criticism is tut tutted and described as being from someone ‘tainted by mainstream medicine’ or some similar nonsense. It’s bovine effluent, it anything like this worked it’d be taken on board and called medicine.
@Jed I. Knight: What’s worse is he takes money from people who seriously believe he will make them feel better then sends them home saying they are healed. And he’s allowed operate this business legally?? If I was getting people to lick the backs of frogs and charging them for claiming that I’m curing their acne I’d be locked up. What is it you claim to help or cure people of Dr . Brian Moore, spinologist to the stars?
@Annette Curtin: Doctor? I find that hard to believe, whatever about the rest. These things always follow the same formula with the practitioner waving their wand, praying or whatever. If you fail to get better it’s your fault for not being suitably holy enough, or not standing on your head with your finger out the window when an east wind blows during a full moon. It’s never because it’s nonsense.
@Brian Moore: i had something like vertigo did a lot of weight lifting went and got physio on my back and neck dizzyness gone get your spine checked.
@Brian Moore: I’ve suffered from migraine since the age of 8 I don’t think I put out any of my vertebra, as I’ve got older (42 now) they’ve got less and less common.
@Jed I. Knight: Agree, total nonsense. A relative of mine once had to have actual surgery on her spine. While waiting in great pain for the operation, which did work, she had to deal with well-meaning fools offering various “cures” – from drinking water from place A to an offer to drive her to place B – at a time when she couldn’t sit up – to see “a man who can cure you – he cured a winning greyhound!” People should know better than to plague the sick with pointless “one size fits all” remedies.
Lying in a dark room waiting for ur head to explode and often wishing that it wud.
Got a migraine once , though i was a goner
One in four of us has an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), otherwise known as a hole in the heart.
Whilst in the womb we are immersed in the Amniotic fluid, and there is an open flap between the upper two chambers, or Atria, of the heart. In the months following birth this flap usually seals, but in 25% of us it does not seal shut.
This defect has been linked with Migraine with Aura.
There are on record persons who, when this opening has been sealed, suffer no further symptoms of migraine.
The test for this ASD is quite simple and involves checking to see if a dye will pass from left to right in the upper chambers. The sealing procedure is painless.
If you suffer from a migraine with aura why not request a test from your doctor? I do know the Mater and CUH do these procedures.
Migraine is the modern version of lower back pain… impossible to prove and remarkably seems to plague those who get sick pay mostly… remarkable that.
@frank murphy: what utter rubbish. Migraine can, and does, be medically diagnosed. You obviously never had a migraine. Let’s see you try deal with a pain so blinding it leaves you slumped over the toilet bowl while vomiting until the pressure builds because your head is held down so long that your nose starts bleeding, all while being unable to switch on the lights out of the fear that that extra bit of pain will accompany the lights. What a moronic comment and completely devoid of any intelligent argument.
@frank murphy: oh, and as someone who suffers severe migraines, I have only had two sick days in 4 years. Both without pay.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: thank you for proving my point about sick pay
@frank murphy: how exactly did I prove your point about sick pay? You insinuated migraine was a fake illness and people only claim they have it to get sick pay. I quite literally demonstrated that I suffer from it but never have claimed sick pay, contrary to your insinuation.
@frank murphy: you must have something more in your life than resorting to this level of trollery, surely ?
@frank murphy: Where did you get your medical degree, you are a neurologist? If you’ve ever seen anyone having a migraine, hurling their guts up, in agony at the slightest noise or lights or even strong smells sometimes you wouldn’t be so inclined to make ridiculous comments like that.
But then that’s why you make so many stupid comments, to provoke, to incite. You probably don’t know the first thing about migraine, or even care, your purpose here is to troll.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: I get all of that plus the aura, numb lips and tongue and mouth, cant speak properly, and the aftermath for me is like being a malfunctioning robot.
@frank murphy: arsehole .. get migraines do you?
@frank murphy: You’d give anyone migraine coming out with that shite ye big bad troll ye
And sugar is linked to dementia
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-startling-link-between-sugar-and-alzheimers/551528/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
And poor mental health is linked to bad gov.
Franky needs to buy a dictionary.
Heart attacks are more lethal in women than men and some pain killers can effect the heart beat / rhythm in the over 40s and therefore cause heart attacks then???
have your say