It’s normally a very dry, sun-soaked event, but this year’s Burning Man has been a massive washout… leaving 70,000 festival-goers literally stuck in the mud in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
The unexpected weather brought on severe rainstorms on the normally very dusty Playa flats, causing the grounds to be inundated with water and get so muddy that most vehicles simply couldn’t track through it.
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Due to the difficulty in entering or exiting the event, organisers have encouraged ‘Burners’ to shelter-in-place and conserve food and water until the weather clears up.
This is what Burning Man usually looks like: very dusty, very dry and very warm…
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This week, not so much.
Updates from the playa, collapsed shade structures, destroyed shiftpods and flooded tents. Thankfully no one got seriously injured and some of our friends in RVs at camp are taking in displaced campers pic.twitter.com/6M4JsUFJW9
— Sol (@sol_flac) September 2, 2023
One Australian notable attendee is Casey Donovan, who seems to be making the most of it.
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DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock managed to escape the dysfunction.
On Saturday, the EDM artist posted a video of himself riding on the back of a truck with a group of people, including Rock.
According to his caption, Diplo had been walking through the muddy paths of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada looking for a ride after the festival was inundated with water.
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Chris Rock hasn’t commented further on his escape from Burning Man or how he got on the truck.
The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that at least one person has died ‘during this rain event’ but details as to what the cause was, or the person’s identity, have been scant.
