The swamp seems to be over. Tens of thousands of Burning Man festival attendees returned home on Monday, September 4th. They were stuck in the Black Rock Desert – after Black Rock City, the ephemeral city of festival goers – in the American state of Nevada for several days, turning into thick, sticky mud after heavy rains.
Access to Black Rock City, a few dozen kilometers from the first houses, was closed to the 70,000 festival-goers on Friday because of bad weather that turned the “Playa,” a huge open-air area, into an impassable, muddy area transformed. But organizers asked visitors to delay their departure from the site – located in the dry bottom of a lake in a remote area of the Nevada desert – until Tuesday to avoid major traffic jams.
But the Burners, dressed in the eccentric outfits that characterize them, left the premises as soon as permission was granted. Some walked at night to reach the only motorable road eight kilometers away and hitchhiked. Including celebrities such as: Comedian Chris Rock and artist Diplo were picked up by a fan. An approach that did not please other festival-goers, who respected the authorities’ instructions and stayed on site.
Elsewhere in Nevada, rainfall caused flooding, particularly in the city of Las Vegas. According to state police, one person died due to the bad weather at the festival, but authorities did not release details of the circumstances. Last year, Burning Man experienced an intense heat wave with strong winds that had already made the experience difficult for festival goers.
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