Burning Man organizers give go-ahead to leave flooded festival grounds

BLACK ROCK DESERT — Burning Man organizers have given the go-ahead for partygoers to start driving out of the festival on Monday afternoon after heavy rainfall turned the counterculture event in the northern Nevada desert into a mud pit.

The official mass exodus of people’s cars, vans and RVs officially began at 2 p.m. Monday, and the ban on driving has been lifted, although the playa in the Black Rock Desert is still muddy in areas, according to Burning Man’s official Twitter account. Organizers urged drivers to stay on hard-packed roads and avoid standing water.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office also announced Monday that officials have not been able to determine an “immediate cause of death” for a 32-year-old man who died at the festival on Friday during the rainfall.

The sheriff’s office also said that anyone who has left the festival will not be allowed to return, either to watch the wooden structure burn or to receive their property, according to a Monday press release.

Officials also said there was “no validity” to any reports regarding a disease outbreak, and that all attendees have been free to leave at their own discretion.

The festival was closed to incoming vehicles after more than a half an inch of rain on Friday drenched Black Rock Desert about 110 miles north of Reno.

The tens of thousands of people who descend on the playa each year were warned to shelter in place, although social media was full of posts and videos documenting burners’ attempts at driving out of the mud and back to paved roads.

The road closures came just before “the Man” — a large wooden effigy — was supposed to have been burned Saturday night, but was postponed as authorities worked to reopen exit routes. The effigy was instead scheduled to burn at 9 p.m. Monday, while the temple burn, a separate large wooden structure typically torched after the Man, is expected to happen Tuesday evening.

A live webstream on Burning Man’s website showed fireworks erupting around the Man at approximately 9:20 p.m. Monday, as the structure started to light on fire.

Operations at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport have not been severely affected by Burning Man this year, although the airport is providing festivalgoers with plastic booties for their feet, hoses to wash down their items and plastic bags to separate their luggage and prevent the spread of the alkali mud and dust from the playa, said Stacey Sunday, the airport’s director of corporate communications.

Because of the delayed road openings and delayed burn of the wooden structures, the airport may see festival attendees traveling through later in the week than usual.

“We’re trying to keep the airport as clean as possible,” Sunday said.

‘A little bit dirty and muddy but spirits are high’

The annual gathering 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: 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.

“We are a little bit dirty and muddy but spirits are high. The party still going,” Scott London, a Southern California photographer, said, adding that the travel limitations offered “a view of Burning Man that a lot of us don’t get to see.”

At least one fatality has been reported at the festival, but Burning Man organizers said the death of a man in his 40s wasn’t weather-related.

The sheriff’s office identified the man on Monday as 32-year-old Leon Reece. Police received a report of an unresponsive man at about 6:24 p.m. Friday as medical personnel were administering CPR, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

“Due to the unusual rain event happening on the Playa, access to the area and investigative efforts were delayed,” the release said.

Once police arrived at the area, a doctor at the festival had pronounced Reece dead. His body was taken to the Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy, and the results are pending a toxicology report, the sheriff’s office said.

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. Revelers were urged to conserve supplies of food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.

Catching a ride

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 6 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 emphasizes self-sufficiency — meaning most people bring in their own food, water and other supplies.

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.

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.

“I’m not leaving until both ‘The Man’ and ‘The Temple’ burn,” Barger said, referring to the wooden effigy and wooden structure that are traditionally torched during the event’s last two nights.

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’t been able to reach the site since Friday’s rainstorm. Some revelers said trucks had resumed cleaning on Sunday.

‘Everyone has just adapted’

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.

“Everyone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,” Barger said. “I danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.”

On their website, organizers encouraged participants to remain calm and suggested that the festival is built to endure conditions such as 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 5 miles from the site.

The event began Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday with attendees packing up and cleaning up after themselves.

Review-Journal staff writer Katelyn Newberg contributed to this report.