Desert rain leaves thousands stranded in muddy mess at Burning Man

AFP |Black Rock City

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Tens of thousands of festivalgoers were stranded Sunday in deep mud in the Nevada desert after rain turned the annual Burning Man gathering into a quagmire, with police investigating one death.

Video footage showed costume-wearing “burners” struggling across the wet gray-brown site, some using trash bags as makeshift boots, while dozens of vehicles became stuck in the sludge.

Many events at the counterculture festival, which drew some 70,000 people, were cancelled when rain tore down structures for dance parties, art installations and other entertainment.

Police said they were probing one death, without giving further details. Fear set in among some attendees desperate to flee the muddy site. “I got scared with what happens when so many people run out of toilet paper and water and food, so I felt I had to get out,” Pascale Brand, a 40-year-old who arrived from the Netherlands, told AFP.

Brand said she had been “crying a lot,” before deciding on Sunday that “I am leaving no matter what.” She got a seat in a neighbour’s vehicle and they made it down a muddy road without any problems.

“There were people yelling at you, ‘You can’t leave... Go back! The gates are closed,’” she said, but the vehicle made it past an unmanned gate, and to a paved road.