2023-09-02 20:54:15
The participants of the American alternative festival Burning Man might no longer go to or leave the site on Saturday, installed in the Nevada desert, because of heavy rains which transformed the place into a field of mud and forced the organizers to close the doors.
• Read also: Surreal scene in Las Vegas: Flooded streets following heavy rain
“The gates and the airport of Black Rock City (the name of the site, editor’s note) remain closed, all entry or exit is delayed until further notice”, repeated at regular intervals since midnight the account X (ex-Twitter) of Burning Man.
The organizers have also invited participants already there to “keep water, food and fuel and find warm and safe shelter”.
Due to the heavy showers, “la playa”, the huge esplanade characteristic of the event has been made impassable.
If the rains stopped during the day, they should be back on Sunday, the last day of the festival, while temperatures overnight from Saturday to Sunday should drop to around 10 degrees, once more according to the organizers’ account.
The majority of the planned activities have been suspended, including the firing of the wooden giant installed in the center of “la playa”, which marks the end of the festival and gives it its name.
The festival had been confronted last year with an intense heat wave with strong winds which had already made the experience difficult for the “burners”, name of the festival-goers.
60,000 people trapped in sticky sludge-like mud, unable to move or even walk from place to place, with limited food and water and bathrooms, maybe not able to leave until Tuesday? And it’s raining once more tomorrow? What might go wrong? pic.twitter.com/mmLLNb0s6e
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 2, 2023
Launched in 1986 in San Francisco, Burning Man aims to be an indefinable event, somewhere between a celebration of the counter-culture and a spiritual retreat.
Initially held on a beach in San Francisco, Burning Man has become a structured festival, with a budget of nearly $45 million (2018 figures) and more than 75,000 participants in the last edition, down from the previous one in 2019.
It has been held since the 1990s in the Black Rock Desert, a protected area in northwest Nevada, which the organizers are committed to preserving.
1693696098
#Tens #thousands #Burning #Man #festivalgoers #caught #middle #desert #due #rain