At BRC now. It sucks. Everything is flooded. The man is not going to burn. There are 2 more days of rain forecasted. My guess is Wednesday when driving will be possible.
I promise you, the man will burn if the burners are at all dedicated to the cause. Dried wood only soaks a few millimeters of rain unless it's completely submerged for a very long time. Use an accelerant to get it started, and nature will do the rest.
Will they be allowed to? I imagine there is some sort of agreement with local/state government in place and this rain will already cause them to keep the camp up longer than was probably approved.
The camera rotates randomly once in a while, so you can see everything. Not raining much, if at all. Some mud. Overcast. Maybe 75 people total are wandering around in the mud. A few random art installations. Everybody else is probably in the big RV park.
Exit road still unusable for non-offroad vehicles. Current plans are to reopen it on Monday 4 September. Sanitation trucks are now servicing porta-potties again. Comm, power, and emergency services are up.
The actual "burn" is now scheduled for 2100 Monday 4 September. Maybe.
Reno Airport does not have space for people who escape, but Reno hotels do.
"Participants are not being detained. ... The Burning Man organization’s advice is for participants to delay their departures to avoid getting stuck in the mud, but people are free to leave should they choose to do so."
"The online rumors of transmissible illnesses in Black Rock City are unfounded and untrue."
The Burning Man radio station, live on playa. I think they're right next to the livecam this year, but am not sure.
If you'd like up to date-ish info on the scene, BMIR is a good enough resource. Seems that most Burners are resigned to getting out on Tuesday at this point.
An investigation has been launched into the death of a person during torrential rain at the Burning Man festival in the US state of Nevada.
No further details have been given about the circumstances of their death.
In a statement on Saturday, the Pershing County Sheriff's Office said it is "currently investigating a death which occurred during this rain event", and that the person's family had been notified.
I watched the vid, idk how I feel now. The protestors appear to have been illegally protesting. I really know nothing about it apart from what was in the vid.
Having said that, the/some people going to Burning Man, didn't seem like very nice people either.
I get that blocking the road isn't cool at the best of times, but feel this could've been handled better.
I'm not from the US, so had no clue who Rangers are (are they like police?). To me, at first they looked like hire a cop from the festival. While it looked like the first Ranger truck started a dialog, another decided to go a more violent route. There are a few cuts in the vid there, so it's not clear how long dialog was tried or what happened during that time and how justified the violent end was.
Coming from a country where police are generally pretty chill unless really provoked, how this was ended seemed extreme to me.
The comments in the vid kinda scare me tbh. It'll all fun and games, till you're at the receiving end, or someone dies.
Rangers are basically “the cops” of BLM land, so if there’s an issue they’re the ones who will show up. In general these guys do the best with what they’ve got and they probably hate BM and all the hassle it brings. A normal weekend in rural Nevada requires maybe a call about a rancher’s lost livestock or a normal patrol route. These guys are certainly ill equipped to handle 70k outsiders showing up for a week, and particularly not well equipped for settling interpersonal/ideological disputes elegantly. I think their “ram down the barricade” strategy is pretty parsimonious given the time and tools they have to deal with protests and angry travelers.
And neither are the same thing as Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police, which others have said is who is featured in the video. I have no idea. But the uniforms of the three different entities probably don't look much alike.
Burning Man has been happening there for 30 years. I find it impossible to believe they are "ill equipped to handle 70k outsiders showing up for a week".
Pretty disappointing how big of a jerk that one burner guy appears to be, including physically intimidating behavior. I don't know much about BM ethos but this is not the sort of person I want to be spending time around
Huge traffic jam full of Trucks that never ever drove off the road. Only few truck drivers deciding supremely risky move of driving on flat grassy shoulder.
Posting from BRC via Starlink intermittently powered by solar (it's a foggy day). The sound camps are bumping their music out across playa and people are venturing out (on foot) to go dancing. Hopefully everyone realizes that now is not the time to take a shower and to conserve water and other consumables.
If you try driving you'll get about 10 feet and then you'll sink up to the middle of the wheels.
As someone who is not there, but who has been there four times and run build lead for my camp...
Rain is not unheard of. It's probably pretty muddy and less fun than it normally would be.
Nobody is starving or dying of dehydration, and there is no danger of that. Most camps (and many people) have a huge surplus of supplies. Last time I was there, I drove out with a few dozen cans of sparkling water that I just didn't get to hand out.
There are PLENTY of supplies.
The worst thing that could happen is that somebody has a medical emergency and are unable to be evacuated until Monday/Tuesday. That's a real concern, but there are plenty of platforms that can land a helicopter if that's necessary.
This isn't the catastrophe calling for FEMA involvement that the article makes it sound like. :rolleyes:
If you're there, shelter in place, and listen to people who are more experienced. This helps the medics.
Typically many medical issues are straightforward to triage and treat with field kits. Then the medics ask the person's friends to drive the person to Reno for more in-depth care.
Examples in my experience are twisted ankles, broken arms, alcohol sickness, dehydration, cardiac events, infections, lost prescriptions, overdoses, electrocutions, eye scratches, falls from heights, power tool slips, cold exposure, and of course burns.
This year, it turns out the timing of the rain makes for new kinds of challenges for the medics, because they're unable to use many of the transport vehicles that are akin to golf carts. And the medics are currently unable to refer people to Reno.
In a city of 70K+ people who planned for 5 days on average, now stuck for 3 more days because of the rain, estimate 50%+ more medical issues. And no way currently to drive to Reno.
In parallel, some generators will run out of gas supplies, some portas and bathrooms will run out of supplies and servicing, some heaters will run out of propane, etc. This combination tends to make people uneasy and somewhat irrational.
This is why shelter in place is important: it helps reduce accidents and injuries, and helps people to feel calm and think clearly. Help the medics and volunteers by staying put, being more careful than usual, and helping people as you can.
The advice to conserve supplies, and keep warm, is not because the whole city is likely to run out or freeze-- it's because medics want to minimize people wandering around the city seeking supplies, and want to keep people in good physical health and good mental health.
When I wrote counterpoint, I meant to your opening "Folks, the article is breathless and ridiculous" and closing ":rolleyes:" because those sound (to me) like shallow dismissals. And felt (to me) like you were downplaying safety measures.
I'll delete my counterpoint word. My comment focuses on safety measures.
I don't understand your point? The article sounds reasonable:
"If you are in BRC, conserve food and water, shelter in a warm space,” warned festival organizers according to the Reno Gazette Journal. The news site reported that 73,000 people (a larger population than the city of Santa Cruz) are currently at the festival."
Which sounds like a reasonable reminder to not dump your water jugs and toss your remaining food in trash bags when you're packing up your camp because you may be there a few days longer than expected.
I also thought your point is to disregard safety measures. Perhaps because your original comment says that the article is ridiculous; and the article, sensationalized or not, advises to “conserve food and water, shelter in a warm space”.
But I didn't say that. You just made that assumption.
Just because the article is ridiculous does not mean I disagree with every single thing in there. I just think it's ridiculous, particularly in tone.
And also, I stand behind saying there's plenty of food and water. So, by all means "conserve food and water" if you want to, but saying that people "need" to is overstating the reality.
I think you're both attacking this problem from similar places. Panicking is a good way to get people to disregard safety measures. Shelter in place is important and one way to help it work is to reassure people that there are enough supplies.
From what I gathered, you're both saying that the correct situation is to stay in place because there are enough supplies? The key is to reinforce that idea and downplay the risk as long as everyone listens. If the roads are muddy and miserable remember that the more experienced participants prepared for this. Staying with them, sheltering in place is your best bet. If you try to leave and not follow safety protocols and the experienced participants you're likely to get yourself into trouble.
While you two are arguing it seems to be on the angle of approach and not the outcome. At least that's what it seems like to me who honestly has no idea what's going on and only barely read the article.
Sure hope so! You know what can change that though? More mud.
No one is asking to fly in the military here or something. People are observing: “oh, that seems like a risky situation that could go very south very quickly.”
One advantage of everything being deep intractable mud - mud is soft! So less chance of compound fractures from a fall at least.
Though vehicle recovery is going to be epic. And that is a good way to break/kill people if not done very carefully.
I’ve seen (very expensive) vehicles end up completely destroyed and abandoned when someone wandered a bit too far out into a surprisingly wet/soft lakebed (around Ballarat/Trona - I can still see it
on Google Maps, and it got stuck well over 20 years ago!), so I imagine we’ll have plenty of stories of drama to snack on popcorn over when this is all said and done.
Nope. As noted in the paper, they are rare except for in severe trauma without prompt attention.
Otherwise us humans would have a MUCH lower survival rate than we already do out in the wild.
Or as the paper notes “The etiology may be traumatic or, rarely, nontraumatic.”
Non-compound fractures can still cause serious issues if complicated somehow, or even long term loss of function of course if they aren’t set correctly, among other less than ideal chronic issues, which should be done ASAP.
But it’s not like someone is likely to die (or even suffer serious long term issues) from an uncomplicated ulnar fracture if they don’t get to the ER within a few days, for instance.
The amount of water I’m seeing come down in the Truckee area right now sure is epic though, so no question they are in for a ride!
nope. there is no prompt attention in the current situation
as noted in the paper incidence of fat embolism approaches 30%
many undiagnosed incidence are discovered post mortem.
you are attempting to minimize a dangerous situation.
===========
>> EPIDEMIOLOGY
The incidence of FES ranges from < 1 to 29% in different studies. It varies considerably according to the cause. The actual incidence of FES is not known, as mild cases often go unnoticed.
Bulger et al.,[3] in their retrospective study, reported an incidence of < 1%, while Fabian et al. in their prospective study, reported an incidence of 11–29%.[4] Surprisingly, the incidence was 0.9% when only clinical criteria were used to diagnose FES, whereas with the aid of postmortem examination the incidence was as high as 20%.[2] <<
2. Georgopoulos D, Bouros D. Fat embolism syndrome clinical examination is still the preferable diagnostic method. Chest. 2003;123:982–3.
3. Bulger EM, Smith DG, Maier RV, Jurkovich GJ. Fat embolism syndrome: A 10 years review. Arch Surg. 1997;132:435–9.
Your own refs point out it is usually not a problem, and there are very low occurancy rates. The situations it’s a problem, it’s obvious that there was a severe break.
The folks seeing higher rates are seeing them because their samples are coming from data sets with specific trauma backgrounds. Which is not surprising. If you look at postmortem results for people who died with broken bones, those folks all had severe issues! They died.
Probably none of them caused by getting their arm slammed in a car door, for example. Most likely caused by long falls off ladders, or car accidents, or industrial accidents, or getting beaten to death, or shot, or any number of traumatic events.
If you look at a dataset of all broken bones (which will be difficult to do frankly, as 90% of them won’t even show up in a database as they’ll be handled in an outpatient setting), the numbers will look wildly different.
In this situation if it was serious they’d just get medivac’d then. Which is not going to be difficult in this situation. If someone gets hit/run over with a vehicle, or hit by machinery, or has a giant pile of lumber collapse on them, or whatever, it’s not like anyone is going to tell them ‘oops, nothing we can do!’.
It’s mud. It makes walking and driving difficult. It isn’t going to make it hard for a helicopter with a decent pilot, especially with a helpful ground team. Reno has a very good medical center (several, actually).
I live about 2 hrs south of BM quite near the route that all the burners take to get to BM. It's rainy, has been for the last two days. But this is Nevada. It'll dry up and be like it never happened in no time.
I live in Utah and have spent a lot of time on and around dry like beds. They do not “dry up quickly”. A quarter inch under the crust is likely going to be mud for weeks or months. Some vehicles might be fine but heavy ones are in deep $&@! until they are recovered. Just my uninformed opinion.
Dry lake beds/playas tend to work differently. The caliche/clay tends to crust over and keep the fun, nasty goo around just under the surface for a lot longer than anyone expects. If someone goes out onto it, they can break through into stuff that doesn’t support any weight.
Kind of like if it was thin ice, but it’s actually (mildly) caustic mud.
That said, never tested this on that specific playa. It’s also usually somewhat location dependent even within a specific lakebed.
Don’t be surprised though if it takes months (next year? If there are followup storms) for some of these vehicles to be extracted.
The only thing breathless seems to be your response to the article. It seems like a pretty straightforward laying out of the facts along with official recommendations and statements.
The article seems to be reporting the facts in a fairly reasonable manner. We have friends who are there and they told us this exact same information: They've been told to conserve, no porta-potty cleaning is coming anytime soon, they may not make it out until Wednesday.
The article doesn't even say they are running out of supplies, other than the organizers have told people to conserve.
Burning man is in the Black Rock Desert. The Black Rock Desert is an endorheic basin. There are no outflows. The lake bed itself is 1,000 sq miles. The drainage that drains into the lake bed is 11,600 sq miles.
An inch of rain isn't a big deal, but when you concentrate it 11:1 it becomes very serious very quickly.
Desert ground is hard and mostly impervious. That 1" of rain will mostly run off from the surrounding area into the now not so dry lakebed. There's a dry lakebed not far from me a little smaller than up there and an inch of rain can easily lead to a foot of standing water if the rain happens over a widespread area in the watershed of that lakebed. I hope they packed stilts!
While I don't disagree with you at all, the majority of burners are probably not well supplied build leads for their own camps.
I went last year and while I was very well supplied and had a large RV with my own solar-powered refrigerator, I met up with friends that were not as wealthy and probably fit the typical profile for burners. They stayed in a tent, were at a camp with a centralized power source with a somewhat strict rationing system. They typically planned out their day such that most meals involved free food prepared using ingredients procured from a service that required driving into the campgrounds to make deliveries every day to many different camps. Many burners depend on water that is also delivered by water trucks that to perform water deliveries that were ordered and scheduled weeks before the event. You may be neglecting that not everybody is well-supplied and could barely afford the ticket and transportation.
Which is why the “radical self-reliance” thing is so ironic/sad in this situation. Most people aren’t there for that, despite the warnings that RSR is part of the deal, the fact is that anyone who’s particularly interested in that kind of experience is already solo backpacking or something this weekend.
Damn... I am man enough to concede that you just Uno-Reversed my argument. You even had the sense not to introduce new thoughts that I could potentially attack out of spitefulness. Extra points, even, because the fact that I didn't think of it first undermines the fact that I attended it last year since I obviously didn't read the principles. I'm more impressed than insulted, btw.
This is the last 2 days of Burning Man. How on earth would there be plenty of supplies left at this point? I bet most supplies were used up intending to leave tomorrow. If they are stuck there for several days they actually could run out of supplies. This is a weirdly arrogant statement to make.
Burning man has peaked. This year there were tons of people trying to sell their ticket at discount. Some friends were giving away tickets. I don't think we will see the same demand again. Which is good - 70k people is more than enough.
Next year, just watch craigslist or fb marketplace a month beforehand.
Or maybe people's ability to attend is simply a function of the economy, which is currently in high interest rate territory. The cost to attend is the equivalent of a trip to Europe for a week or a month, depending on how you roll. With things how they are, people simply can't take the time off work or afford to go.
You'll have about 250k people at Glastonbury, but there is alot to do at Glastonbury having been a few times, so 70k sounds rather cosy, which seems so unusual for the US which normally does things bigger and better.
Going to Burning Man is something on my bucket list, which is why your comment surprised me, how can you say its peaked?
80% of the time when someone says an event peaked it’s because they’ve aged out of the event or the event evolved in a way that wasn’t to their liking.
You should totally go if you get a chance, but to be clear Burning Man is not a music festival a la Glasto. It’s much more of an art festival than anything else, and it’s really spectacular.
Also just ignore the lore around anti-capitalism, eco friendly yada yada. It’s a really sick party for super rich people and the artists they patronize.
It is possible to have the opinion that burning man is great and also that it has hit the upper bound of popularity.
This year was different - it was super easy to get tickets, often at steep discount. I don't see why next year will be different, especially with horror stories getting off the playa this year.
This is a good thing! If you want to go, now you can.
That’s usually not what people mean when they say an event peaked. The “peak” is always well below the highest-attendance, because it clearly was already uncool when attendance hit its max.
It is because Burning Man is not Glastonbury. If it hadn't peaked in popularity before this it sure has now.
That really doesn't mean anything as far as the quality of the experience. It might even be better subjectively with less people. If it is something you really want to experience then go sooner rather than later though. I really loved BM when I was younger but I have aged out and it is pretty much the last thing I would want to do now. This mud just hammers that point home for me.
You should find a camp to join that can help coordinate tickets. (Whether Directed Group Sale or just having the network for overflow tickets.) Unless you’re prepared to spend $$$ and suffer through figuring out a lot to truly DIY it, it’ll be a much better experience to be part of a camp that knows what it is doing anyway.
70k ppl consume a vast quantity of food and water every hour. Once stuff runs out things get dicey very fast. Yes another week would almost surely lead to that eventuality - but when is the tipping point exactly? Hard to know.
Food ppl can manage without for a couple of days, but water is a different matter. Many camps may be relying on regular top ups of their water cube, and camp mates may not bring reserves because of the camp provided water. If water cannot get into BRC then you have a simple maths problem - water on playa / ppl on playa = time.
In France, media told us underground water reserves were overflowing after hyping drought for 6 months (tip: if you don’t cherry-pick the stats, there is no more drought than every year). So they argued that drought causes the overflowing of phreatic reserves. Later during the summer we had heavy rains. Now everyone jokes that we have heavy rains due to drought.
Seriously I hope the media will stop preaching in one direction. Today they try to demonstrate GW, but miserably fail at it, since they’re commenting weather and not climate. They’re doing more damage than they solve.
Being in a desert during an El Niño season is a poor decision. It does rain occasionally and I don’t think people going to camp with a days worth of food in small tents understand the risk of a desert climate.
Also, it’s not that remote. Diplo and Chris Rock walked 5 miles out of the site and got picked up and driven back so while the situation does suck, it’s not like they are alone in the great white north 100 miles from civilization. It’s off a road only a few miles.
Ex-Burner climate activists blockaded the BRC entrance for 30 minutes a few days ago. It shows that whatever climate activists can't stop the climate eventually will.
Yep turns to a caustic mud. There was a weird weather modification attempt during the 2000 one. Mandated curfew one night everyone ordered to stay in their camps events canceled. Sunny day and 4 huge military cargo aircraft come from east circle and head south then weather came from south west and windy that night. Anyways what ever happened the playa gets less comfortable when it's wet and cool.
The playas in Nevada aren't "dirt" in the conventional sense. They are covered in layers of alkali salts that precipitated out of the lakes that used to be there, with chemistry influenced by Nevada's active volcanic geology. It can be quite corrosive and you probably don't want to subject your skin to it for extended periods of time. Nevada has a very wide range of pH found in nature due to its geochemistry.
It’ll definitely screw up your skin (not fatally), and can cause corrosion to vehicles and the like. It’s mostly alkaline though. So think (weak) lye, not acidic.
Baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate) is something like pH 8, sodium carbonate (What you get if you put bicarbonate in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour or so) is something like ph 10-11, and is a large component of alkalai soils. [1] You probably won't have a problem with baking soda but the more basic form of it (as we call 'washing soda') is definitely something you don't want on your skin for long periods of time. I suggest making some in the oven to soak some soiled socks or something you have - but careful breathing the dust in, you'll notice that it's way sharper on your nose than baking soda.
The Black Rock Desert is way more remote (certainly from Reno, and possibly even from Gerlach) than any British music festival I've been to, I'd much rather get stuck in your average British mud than the lake-bed clay that's up there, and then there's the climate. I say this having been to both – they're very different.
Big rainfall in the desert can get pretty nasty. One reason (among others) is that a lot of deserts rest on caliche, which is a hard layer of clay-ish soil that doesn't absorb water very well. So instead of soaking into the ground, water flows over the ground, and that's how you get flash flooding.
In Black Rock specifically, they're also setting up camp on a literal dried-up lake bed, so when the playa floods it turns back into a huge, muddy lake.
The article paints a pretty dire picture. Having never been to that part of the world, is the nearest place that could support Reno? I assume this would need a post-hurricane type support airdrop of supplies?
You’re told when you buy a ticket to prepare for this sort of event - it’s happened before. So anyone who’s actually on their shit will have enough food, water, etc to wait for it to dry out and leave normally. They even explicitly advise bringing a bucket to turn into a makeshift toilet if something like this happens and shuts down the porta potties.
That said, I’d bet a sizable fraction of the attendees are completely unprepared or dependent on others to get them ready. Probably people will share extra supplies with them. Maybe this entire event will expose just how commercialized it’s gotten.
Despite the existence of shift pods, and plug and play camping, it's not "Burning Man, brought to you by Budget Rental" level of commercialized. Thankfully theres EDC and other events to take that stead.
It's really only a couple of hours by car or truck, on well paved streets. Gerlach is the small town on the edge of the park, they have at least places to stage rescue/supply events.
The issues is car's can't drive in the mud. When it rains, in less than 10 feet, your cars tires will be 50 submerged. So you can't even make it 100 ft, much less to the paved road to Gerlach.
It’s not dire. People overpack, and anyone asking for water or food will get it. There won’t be ice, people’s generators will run out of gas, and I’m sure some people will run out of acid and have nothing to do, but no one is going to need supplies air dropped in.
The story that will get any clicks though is about the pending Burning Man disaster. Of course no one wants to read about reality and how this is not a big deal.
No one will even remember this was a story by Thursday.
There isn't any food or sales at the event so everyone packs enough for a week. Which really means people pack for two weeks. People also bring enough water for a week of 100 degree weather. But it's not that.
Friend had a rubbermaid food bin he used for camping. One time on a walkabout he decided to eat all of it and see how long it lasted him. Lasted three weeks.
So who else has contributed to the MegaGoGo campaign to Build A 300-Mile Wall Around SF During Burning Man, a community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area?
Everyone is still there hanging out in the camping section. Riding a bike or walking on the wet playa is super tough as it cakes everywhere and super slippery. Not there now but was there when I rained a bunch in 2014.
I watched this for a little bit, it does pan over to the campground which is packed full of tents/tarps/cars. But the "main event" area is totally barren you are correct.
The people I've talked to there are mostly worried about missed flights and missed days of work and are otherwise totally fine. Next time we chat I'll ask about the bathroom situation! Though I suppose if push comes to shove you can always dig holes for a couple days.
You can but part of the awkward geological/hydrological fact of the matter is that whatever you leave there will be waiting for you next year. 70k people all taking a poo in a basin with no inflows/outflows will probably have some interesting consequences for the otherwise geologically stagnant area.
> Though I suppose if push comes to shove you can always dig holes for a couple days.
Don't shit in standing water. Don't walk in water you just shit in. Currently everyone is surrounded by water. Shitting in a hole is just shitting in the water you're walking in.
What am I missing here? Flat walk in comfortable temps in a straight line. 5 miles with a bit of rain and some mud. I wouldn't do this in heels, but this doesn't seem life threatening
A 4 year old can walk 5 miles. You don't need cell service- if you can read a map, or just look for landmarks, you will be fine. Moon is still bright. Walking though mud is annoying but easier than deep snow. Getting your stuff back might be annoying, but there's no reason most of these people couldn't walk out of they had to. I've been stranded by a natural disaster-waited a few days and hitchhiked out after fording a river that took out the only bridge. This is just sensationalist stuff; a few tech bros will miss work on Tuesday, but that's the major effect
So you're suggesting people just leave everything there and walk 5 miles to the road and get a ride home. Maybe come back later to see if anything is left?
The first few paragraphs are confusing. Are the attendees unable to drive out through the mud, or are they forbidden to try by local authorities? Or some of both, forbidden to try because they might get stuck even worse?
They can if they'd like to, but they're unable. The kind of mud they're dealing with is very slippery, so, unless you bring a vehicle specifically designed for it, you're not going to be able to drive on it without being sunk up to your axles.
It's strongly discouraged: if people drive and get badly stuck clogging the roads and exit gate, the problem will be even worse and the bulk of the people will be stuck for even longer.
"Please do NOT drive at this time. Road conditions differ based on the neighborhood. We will update you on the driving ban after this weather front has left the area.
It will hamper Exodus if we have cars stuck on roads in our camping areas, or on the Gate Road out of the city. PLEASE don’t be that person. The roads will dry. The issue is NO LONGER ruining the roads (that is the concern before we start the event), but once we are in Exodus we need the roads to be clear, and not to have vehicles blocking traffic flow."
Mud tires would help, but only if you have 4WD really. With mud, you need floatation as much as you need traction, so, mud tires tend to be much wider with deeper tread.
Usually paddle tires (the ones with scoops) are used in sand, not mud.
I would imagine that the authorities won't let you try to drive out if your vehicle doesn't look like it can handle traveling miles through deep mud. If nothing else, then because they'd then be obligated to rescue you when you inevitably get stuck.
Having been there on and off for twenty years, rain storms during BRC are not a new thing. Maybe this is something extraordinary (I'm not there right now) but I really doubt it.
It rained a lot in e.g. 2014 but it was just before and at the start of the event. I don't think there was a time there was anywhere near 73k people already inside unable to leave expecting a couple of days of rain to come right when everyone was planned to head home. At best outlook, this is going to be one of the worst events to have gone to. I don't think it'll be a disaster but I would say it's extraordinary.
In 2000 there was a storm like this starting Monday afternoon. So most people left before or during the start. I think there was only 500 that were stuck for a few days. Since then I've always been aware this could happen. One of my friends was up there and bailed out yesterday for that reason.
One of my long term thoughts about the event is the BLM really needs to require those guys to buy and install ground protection mats to put on their gate road. Probably cost $300k for a mile of the stuff or $10 per participant.
Snow doesn't stick to your shoes the same way mud does. Snow shoes are meant to distribute your weight over a larger surface area to prevent you from sinking down. With mud, it's not so much sinking down as it is clinging to your shoes.
Rain like this is rare buts it’s shut down exit like this before, this isn’t unprecedented. Even during a normal year they shut down entry/exit when sandstorms reduce visibility - often for a couple of hours every few days.
But why rain? There's a road leading up there, right? (or at least somewhere near the festival grounds). Most people will come by car or RV. They can still drive on that road I'd think?
If the festival grounds turn to mud, well... maybe a little detour to get back on that road.
(personally I'd be in no hurry to leave. But if you wanted to, what's holding you back? Organisers saying "road closed"?)
The event is held several miles “into” the dry lake bed - once you get off the paved road, you drive about 1.5 miles on the dry lake bed before you get to the “gate” of the event boundaries. You can see this pretty clearly if you look up its location on Google maps. Right now, the event is completely surrounded, for miles, by muddy lake bed. If you tried to drive your wheels would get jammed up.
I've been to BM during a rainy event - the playa silt is so fine, that when walking around, it built up layers upon layers on the bottom of your shoes, and pretty soon you were walking around in lifted Disco Mud Boots with like 6 inches of mud on the bottoms of your feet.
90% of people way overpack for Burning Man to the point where I stopped bringing food the last few years I attended. No one will go hungry, not even the dumbest of sparkle ponies. I wager there's enough food on the playa right now to last at least another two weeks, maybe a month with even a modicum of rationing. The camps I frequent would end up splitting up the left over alcohol the morning of exodus.
The drugs on the other hand? Those might run out well before the food and leave everyone coming down with nothing to do but stare at the mud.
Without drugs, some Burners' happiness now is entirely dependent on solar panels and gas generators for mood music. Tie the vintage scarf to the door latch.
And, yes, some of us Americans will never starve even if food prices go up 10,000%. I wouldn't doubt Home Depot and Costco stocks blip up for the quarter due to the vast "non-consumerism" consumerism preceding said event.
Not when it's something held in a national park like this. It's an organized camp site not a festival. And they are required to ensure it is safe within reason, and it seems like they did that/are doing that.
Pretty sure there's going to be more than a few against the organizers, and maybe the authorities for allowing it to go through despite the forecasts and not getting people out fast enough. Which is ironic considering the general (or at least loudest) philosophy of Burning Man goers is one of laissez-faire techno libertarianism
this definitely sounds like a headline from the same country that blew 2.3 trillion dollars on a 20 year war in afghanistan to replace the taliban with the taliban, and yet somehow their own citizens trapped at a festival are just going to have to conserve food and water until things get better because nothing can be done. Americans posting in the comments will do backflips to insist this is the best way things are supposed to work, things arent that bad, its about personal responsibility and helping is too expensive.
as a reminder nevada has a national guard and The Chinook is a heavy-lift helicopter that is among the heaviest lifting Western helicopters. we have rescue airboats, amphibious LVTP and even airlift capabilities throughout the nevada desert at various military installations. theres absolutely no reason to "conserve food and water."
casual reminder: tickets for this event are $750 including parking. the idea that help is not on the way (even if it isnt immediately necessary) is a little ridiculous to consider. the event has the potential to cause famine, disease, dehydration and death right now. NV has chosen to make no real effort regardless. no activation or regional planning, just thoughts and prayers.
Under the “principles of burning man” (which are largely not known or ignored by a sizable portion of of attendees in 2023), you should be prepared for this sort of event with enough extra food and water to wait it out. And I think a large fraction of the attendees are. If this was the camp I used to run with, the collective response to this would be to view it as an annoyance, but not life threatening - everyone was on top of their shit and had enough food, water, and shelter to last out something like this. And in fact, people would give you shit if you came around asking for help saying that you didn’t expect rain like this. You’re very explicitly told when buying a ticket that shit like this can happen and you should be prepared to deal with it yourself.
Whether this turns into something requiring external help or evacuation depends on what portion of the attendees really are on top of their shit in 2023.
> theres absolutely no reason to "conserve food and water."
Seems like the reason is so folks can get through the next couple of days without involving the National Guard, which is costly. No one's dying; it's just muddy and unpleasant.
2. Technically it's not even in Nevada, it's in the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation
3. Kind of the entire point of Burning Man is that you are raising a city out of nothing and breaking it down again within the span of a couple weeks against all odds and in one of the least hospitable places on the planet. This is by design. As a participant you are given ample information and time to plan for such eventualities, they are not necessarily predictable but you definitely can and should be prepared for the worst out there. To be blunt, this is what they signed up for. It's a prepper-lite ("radical self-reliance" is one of the founding principles) kind of event. I say this as someone who really enjoyed my time there in past years -- everyone is welcome to attend if they feel up for it, but they are also expected to know what they're getting into and to carry their own weight if things get bad. Not that they will be left to die, as "civic responsibility" is another of the principles embodied by the population of Black Rock City for its duration.
Protip for interested readers: anyone calling Burning Man a "festival" outs themselves as having absolutely no idea what they're talking about and are perpetuating the kinds of narratives that contribute to the flippant and commercialized miasma that has settled around the event over the past years.
That's right. I read somewhere it was held in trust by BLM for the tribe but researching again I can't tell if that specific area is part of the laws that were passed or if it just belongs to BLM outright.
Those words have meanings. Look them up it you don't understand them. They're well used in this context to get the author's point across.
I dunno if I agree with the author. I've never been to Burning Man, but their word usage certainly helps me - a casual onlooker - better understand their frustration.
I wouldn’t be critiquing their choice of words if I didn’t know what they mean. In general flippant is a word that describes attitudes or actions, not a toxic death cloud.
Miasma used here as imagery for rhetorical effect. It really is like a toxic cloud of cultural assumptions and impositions that has choked out a lot of the folks who built the foundation of what makes Burning Man what it is, and not just some festival to wear sparkly clothes and take pictures for Instagram. Not to mention all the money that descends on the event to install shortcuts and cash grabs in an otherwise moneyless, DIY, BYOEverything space.
>as a reminder california has a national guard and The Chinook is a heavy-lift helicopter that is among the heaviest lifting Western helicopters. we have rescue airboats, amphibious LVTP and even airlift capabilities throughout the california desert at various military installations. theres absolutely no reason to "conserve food and water."
so, because taxpayers and revenue have paid for billions of dollars in toys the event-goers should not roll with the punches; 'go ahead and have a great time -- we have a Chinook en route!'
Going to a concert/event/commune/experience isn't some mandatory thing; and the weather isn't somehow unexpected, although it is severe. This isn't the same situation as a typical emergency scene. The comparison to costs of Western war efforts drawn is ridiculous.
Now, if legitimate personal emergencies emerge from the lack of travel access, sure. Roll the services out -- let's save lives; but rain and loss of travel access by itself doesn't constitute the same urgency.
Why should a nation state concern itself with helping some rich people at a festival who have been inconvenienced by a little rain and mud? They have 12 miles to the nearest town and 100 miles to the nearest big city. The festival literally has its own airport but it has been flooded. I suggest they call for helicopters. Many of them probably have their own.
