Tens of thousands of Burning Man festival-goers were still trapped in mud in the Nevada desert on Sunday as American police investigate a death that occurred in bad weather that turned the site into a vast mud field.
• Also read: Burning Man Festival: Police investigate death
• Also read: Tens of thousands of Burning Man festival-goers were stranded in the desert because of rain
Nevada police said Saturday they are investigating a death “during this heavy rain episode,” without providing further details about the circumstances of the death.
In videos shared on social networks, the “playa,” a huge open-air area where the gathering is taking place, appears impassable.
“A little more than 70,000 people” were still stuck at the site Sunday morning, county sheriff Nathan Carmichael said in an interview with CNN.
Some try to leave the site on foot, sometimes using plastic bags as boots, to reach the only passable road 8km away.
However, local authorities are urging people to “stay in place until the ground is sufficiently firm and safe” to allow travel.
AFP
Access to Black Rock City, the name of the festival site, a few dozen kilometers from the first houses, was closed on Friday due to bad weather.
The festival is scheduled to end on Monday, but due to a lack of roads and impending rain, festival-goers could be stranded until Tuesday or Wednesday.
“I’m a surgeon and I have to work on Tuesday, but I’m starting to realize that that won’t be possible and that the patients will need me but I can’t do anything about it,” Doctor T explains to AFP. , a Ukrainian festival-goer living in California who prefers to keep his name secret.
Further rainfall is expected on Sunday before the expected return of the sun on Monday. Given this observation, several festival-goers decided to leave the festival on foot.
“It was an incredibly strenuous 10-kilometer hike, completed at midnight through heavy, slippery mud, but I managed to get through safely,” Neal Katyal, a lawyer who attended the festival, says on his account X ( ex-Twitter). .
It was an incredibly harrowing 6-mile midnight hike through heavy and slippery mud, but I made it out of Burning Man safely. Never before and it was fantastic (with brilliant art and fabulous music)…except for the end. pic.twitter.com/jhxsOfNp5y
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 3, 2023
“It was very slippery and the mud is like cement, it sticks to your boots” and can “act like quicksand,” he warns, urging people to attempt the crossing only in groups and provided they are in good physical condition.
AFP
Others tried in vain to make it by car. In one of the few videos released, an SUV appeared buried up to its body in mud because internet access was limited.
Since Saturday morning, organizers have been inviting local participants to “conserve water, food and fuel and find warm and safe shelter” and are working to set up antennas for internet access.
“We come here (in the middle of the desert) knowing that this is a place where you have to bring everything you need to survive. “That is why we are all well prepared for such a meteorological event,” the organizers assured in a press release to AFP on Saturday.
Sealed off on site, several festival visitors testified to the mutual aid that was in effect. “There is plenty of food and water and people are very generous,” assures Mr. Katyal.
AFP
The burning of the wooden giant erected in the center of “la playa”, which marks the end of the festival and gives it its name, will finally take place on Sunday evening if the weather is nice, the organizers said on Sunday.
The rains caused flooding elsewhere in Nevada, particularly in the city of Las Vegas.
Last year, Burning Man experienced a severe heat wave with strong winds that had already made the experience more difficult for the “burners,” as the festival goers are nicknamed.
The festival, founded in San Francisco in 1986, is intended to be an indefinable event somewhere between a celebration of the counterculture and spiritual retreat.
It has been organized since the 1990s in the Black Rock Desert, a protected area in northwest Nevada that the organizers have set themselves the goal of preserving.