BLM creating full-time Burning Man job

ASSOCIATED PRESS

11 years ago

A 4-foot wooden figure known as “The Man” burns in the Black Rock Desert at the close of the Burning Man festival in 2007 in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. (AP Photo/Reno Gazette-Journal, Andy Barron, file)

RENO — The Bureau of Land Management is creating a full-time position dedicated to the annual Burning Man event in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

BLM officials said they plan to hire someone to oversee contracts, coordinate law enforcement and maintain safety at the weeklong counterculture festival leading up to Labor Day.

Mark Pirtle, BLM’s interim project manager, said those chores have been handled in the past by a series of BLM workers in the Winnemucca District in addition to the regular jobs.

But he told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Thursday the festival has gotten so big and complicated that they can’t continue to operate that way.

Nearly 70,000 people attended the celebration in September about 100 miles north of Reno.