The festival that spans more than three decades hosted over 80,000 people who attended this summer’s annual counterculture festival, an event held for the first time since COVID-19 forced cancellations in recent years. Burning Man’s Twitter account informed burners leaving on Tuesday that “Exodus wait time is over 9 hours,” urging festival-goers to wait to leave to clear vehicles. Video footage shot by CJ Yu from Los Angeles, CA. shared on social media showed the massive line of thousands of vehicles leaving the desert in what Yu says was “the most Mad Max I’ve felt all week.” “Turn off your vehicle to save gas and be patient. Teams are working to keep the roads safe and get everyone home safely,” the tweet continued. Thousands of “burners” descended on the Black Rock Desert in Gerlach, Nev., on Aug. 28, with the event wrapping up on Monday, with most spectators leaving on Tuesday. It appears some broken down vehicles in need of assistance were part of the problem as organizers warned drivers that one of the local petrol stations had run out of gas. This year’s festival, according to the Reno Gazette, saw some of the worst dust storms in years, with whiteout conditions nearly every day, forcing festival-goers to wait hours in their vehicles to get through the gates to a procession going blindly into the storm. On Saturday, Burning Man’s Twitter account warned people that gates were closed due to whiteout conditions, asking attendees not to drive. “Vehicles freeze and get lost on the playa. Delay your departure until the weather clears,” organizers said on Twitter. During the last festival in 2019 before COVID, a fatal crash closed a rural highway leading to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, snarling traffic for hours and temporarily stranding hundreds of spectators at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Local media reported that nearly 800 spectators spent the night at the airport or found local motel rooms with the help of local airport and tourism officials, while most boarded buses bound for the celebration 100 miles (160 km) north of Reno. SHARE:
