Tens of thousands of people are being asked to stockpile food, water and shelter as they wait to leave the famous festival site.
Participants of the American alternative festival Burning Man were no longer able to enter or leave the site located in the Nevada desert in the United States this Saturday because heavy rains had turned the places into a field of mud, forcing the organizers to close the doors.
“The gates and airport of Black Rock City (the name of the location, editor’s note) remain closed, all entrances and exits are delayed until further notice,” has been repeated at regular intervals since midnight the X account (ex-Twitter) from Burning Man.
Organizers also urged participants already on site to “conserve water, food and fuel and find warm and safe shelter.”
10 degrees at night
Due to the heavy rains, “la playa”, a huge promenade characteristic of the event, became impassable.
If the rains stop during the day, it is expected to rain again on Sunday, the last day of the festival, while temperatures are expected to drop again to around 10 degrees during the night from Saturday to Sunday, according to the organizers.
Most planned activities have been suspended, including the lighting of the wooden giant installed in the center of “la playa”, which marks the end of the festival and gives it its name. The weather also caused cleaning and emptying of thousands of on-site toilets to stop, The Guardian reports.
Often associated with heat
The festival faced a severe heatwave last year with strong winds, which had already made the experience difficult for “burners,” as festival-goers are known.
Launched in San Francisco in 1986, Burning Man aims to be an indefinable event somewhere between counterculture celebration and spiritual retreat. Originally organized on a beach in San Francisco, Burning Man has grown into a structured festival with a budget of almost $45 million (2018 figures) and more than 75,000 participants in the last edition, which is less than the previous one Edition in 2019.
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.