Rains Force Evacuation of 73,000 Burning Man Participants, Turn Event Into Chaos

Burning Man

Federal officials have taken the unprecedented step of shutting down the iconic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, leaving over 73,000 participants stranded in the midst of a treacherous mudscape.The Bureau of Land Management, responsible for the event’s location, issued an urgent directive for attendees to “shelter in place” after relentless rains transformed the event grounds into a muddy quagmire. This unexpected turn of events has drawn comparisons to the ill-fated Fyre Festival of 2017 and has left organizers scrambling to manage the crisis.”Rain over the last 24 hours has created a situation that required a full stop of vehicle movement on the playa… More rain is expected over the next few days and conditions are not expected to improve enough to allow vehicles to enter the playa,” the Bureau said in a statement announcing the closure of access roads.