BLACK ROCK CITY (BRC), NV (CelebrityAccess) – The annual Burning Man festival, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians, activists and advocates to the northern Nevada desert for a lesson in self-sufficiency, avant-garde performances and wilderness camping. The festival ends with the ceremonious torching and burning of a large wooden structure shaped like a man.
The Burning Man festival’s official website invites attendees to get lost (and found) in the dust of BRC 2023. Not this year – no dust to be found. Torrential downpours created a rain-soaked festival site, flooding, extreme mud, road closures and two postponements of the actual “burning man.” According to numerous media reports, it culminated in a mass exodus with a traffic jam of over 7 hours as of Tuesday morning.
Festival attendees began rolling into BRC on the first day of the festival, Sunday (August 27), including comedian Chris Rock, DJ and producer Diplo, actor Joel Kinnaman and many others. However, after a series of summer storms rolled through the festival Friday and Saturday (September 1-2), dropping more than a half-inch of rain on Friday alone, festivalgoers were left stranded as conditions in and around the festival site deteriorated, turning the once dry lake bed into foot-deep mud. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported that “walking was treacherous as thick, slimy mud clung to shoes and anything else it touched.”
The Business Insider reported that medical professionals warned the festival attendees to watch their health while stuck in the muddy desert as stagnant water, porta-potties and cold weather put them at risk of hypothermia, food-borne illnesses and COVID-19.
Burning Man is organized by the Burning Man Project, a non-profit organization that succeeded Black Rock City LLC and its CEO, Marian Goodell, asked attendees to shelter in place and conserve food and water – while the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office posted on X (fka Twitter), that “the Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office officials have closed the entrance to Burning Man for the remainder of the event.”
In addition, law enforcement announced that a man died “during this rain event” but no other details were released until Monday (September 4). Leon Reece, aged 32, was found unresponsive on Friday during the heavy rains, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said in a statement Monday night. His cause of death has not been revealed and the investigation is ongoing.
After organizers lifted the driving ban, the first message appeared on the X account Burning Man Traffic on Monday (September 4) afternoon: “Exodus wait times are approximately 7.5 hours.” The Burning Man website said, “Exodus operations have officially begun in Black Rock City,” noting that in previous years, “Exodus wait times peaked at six to nine hours.”
Organizers urged attendees to “not walk out of the Black Rock Desert,” roughly 110 miles north of Reno, as others had done throughout the weekend, including Diplo and his buddy Rock.
On Saturday, Diplo and Rock documented on their official Instagram (IG) accounts the trek of six miles through the mud, looking for someone to give them a lift. Diplo said on IG, “A fan offered Chris Rock and I a ride out of Burning Man in the back of a pickup. I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out cuz I have a show in DC tonight and didn’t want to let y’all down.” You can view his account HERE.
He made the show.
After two postponements, the burning man was indeed torched on Monday night.
As of press time, Burning Man Traffic posted, “Traffic is still flowing smoothly out of BRC. Approx. 3 hours to highway. Traffic on the highways is good. There are several incidents on 447 and Interstage 80. Take your time and stay alert.”
