While I attended college at the University of Nevada, Reno, the first week of the school year always landed the same week as the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, which attracts more than 70,000 attendees, known as burners, annually. Did any burners attend class that week? No. Could students get any food to eat during the first week of classes? Also, no.
What townie wants “art-obsessed” ravers to blow through their city, burn through local supplies prepping for a nine-day overpriced sojourn in the desert, destroy the local environment, and then be generally raucously annoyingly for the 356 days of the year they are not at the event? Yeah, no one. Everything gets a little more annoying when the burners descend on the city—and that’s in a normal year.
In 2023, things went to crap in the Black Rock Desert. Amid heavy rains that made driving out of the desert impossible, tens of thousands of Burning Man attendees were told on the evening of Friday, September 1, to shelter in place and conserve food, fuel, and water.
The storms continued through the weekend, turning the desert sand into what the Reno Gazette Journal described as “treacherous,” “thick, slimy mud that clung to shoes and anything else it touched,” which made driving off the playa unsafe. While many burners designer drug binge and/or drink their way through the weekend (although drugs are not officially allowed on the playa), 2023’s severe weather conditions have emphasized the risks of spending up to ten days in an isolated, harsh desert environment with limited access to outside resources.
Burners not adequately prepared for extreme weather:
Radical self-reliance is one of the event’s core principles. Although Burning Man provides the essential safety infrastructure, including port-a-potties, ice for sale, and on-site first responders, organizers emphasize that attendees are ultimately responsible for their safety.
“It’s one of the most strikingly beautiful and utterly ethereal locations in the world that will ever try to kill you,” reads the Burning Man website.
While the Burning Man website advises people on preparing for extreme weather with a “personal survival checklist,” the suggested gear list for each attendee is long, rivaling what I needed to live in the St. Lucian jungle for a month. Burning Man suggests that all attendees bring an “extensive” first aid kit, a five-gallon utility bucket with a lid for pooping in, all-weather clothing, fire extinguishers, and more in addition to their own food and water. Though most of the event functions on a gift-economy if you run out of food, attendees are also able to purchase coffee and ice at center camp.
“There’s always people that are not that prepared,” four-time burner Nicole Gallub told CNN.com, “and as the event has grown more popular, it has attracted participants who might not understand the ‘self-reliance’ ethos.”
Black Rock Desert port-a-potties overflow
Another problem arose because of Burning Man’s restricted access: No one could clean or empty the portable toilets.
“From what I understand, because of the flooding, the port-o-potties reportedly can’t be emptied,” Chris Rock wrote in a since-disappeared Instagram Story reported by SF GATE. “And because the gates are closed, people can’t get in to fill generators or deliver supplies.”
A video posted to TikTok by user bryfreeman216 shows him treading through ankle-deep mud to the port-a-potties at Burning Man only to discover even more mud inside.
Well, hopefully it was only mud. TikTok user Burtonburn responded to the post with, “Whole place is going to be the bathroom pretty soon.”
Meanwhile, another user said they had “just shitted in front of somebody’s camper.”
With organizers unable to send people to clean the Black Rock Desert port-a-potties, images of festival attendees frolicking in puddles that mix dirt, water, and quite possibly human waste draw immediate comparisons to Woodstock ’99. At the Rome, New York, festival, the number of port-a-potties installed wasn’t sufficient for the number of attendees, and soon, the male guests resorted to going to the bathroom elsewhere, and excrement from the toilets overflowed into the mud pits.
“Within the first 24 hours, you had kids rolling around in what they thought was mud, but was really human waste,” one witness said in the 2021 HBO documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage.
Attendees at Woodstock ’99 experienced oppressive heat at temperatures over 100 degrees F. Unaware of the contamination, many jumped into the mud pits to stay cool, leading to many confirmed trench mouth and foot cases. A similar concern arose at this year’s Burning Man, as many burners posted videos of themselves wandering the muddy playa barefoot. (FYI: This is always a bad idea; there is something known as “playa foot.”)
In one video posted by TikTok user Rosho, attendees are seen lined up for breakfast, with their bare feet sinking into the ankle-deep mud.
While the comments to the video have since been turned off, Business Insider noted that TikTok commentators had raised concerns about trench foot. “Get ready for trench foot soldiers,” one commented, followed by a saluting emoji.
So far, one person has died
On September 5, the Washoe County coroner released the name of a festival attendee who died on the evening of September 1: Leon Reece Truckee, 32. “The cause and manner of death are pending investigation, but drug intoxication is suspected,” according to local news reports.
According to MTV News, three people died at Woodstock ’99. David G. Derosia, 24, died from heat-related illness. Tara K. Weaver, 28, was struck by two vehicles while walking along the road after she had trouble leaving the event, and neither driver was charged in the incident. Lastly, an unnamed 44-year-old with a preexisting heart condition died of cardiac arrest at a Woodstock campground site. In comparison, three people died at the original Woodstock in ’69.
Fyre Festival, a 2017 festival that eventually saw its organizer, Billy McFarland, sent to prison, caused ten deaths and numerous injuries. In 2013, an EDM music festival, Electric Zoo, was canceled after two attendees, Jeffery Russ and Olivia Rotondo, died from hyperthermia and an overdose of MDMA. (The festival had problems this year as well, but no deaths.)
So, why do major festivals keep going wrong? My guess is how the American legal system limits liability.
In 2019, the non-profit that puts on the festival, Burning Man Project, called the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s proposed safety and security measures “unreasonable” and “untenable,” including the installation of 10 miles of concrete barriers on the event’s perimeter, as well as the installation of dumpsters and hiring companies to haul out the trash. When Burning Man submitted its response to BLM’s environmental impact demands, the organization noted that even adding dumpsters was too much for the event staff, and attendees were accustomed to the event’s principle of radical self-reliance.
(featured image: John Horsley/Avalon/Getty Images)
