Burning Man festival-goers trapped in desert as rain turns site to mud

wolfylow@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 640 points –
Burning Man festival-goers trapped in desert as rain turns site to mud
theguardian.com

You have to laugh … I remember Glastonbury, up to my knees in mud - it’s all part of the fun. Having said that, it’s unlikely turn into a survival situation in a field in Somerset, so not really that comparable …

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The weather-related disruptions have caused suspension of the cleaning and emptying of thousands of portable toilets.

This sounds nightmarish. People will start avoiding the portable toilets and it will be even worse.

Rain outs like this are pretty common at these festivals. The difference here is that I guess it is a bit harder to leave and more remote? I'd say 20% of the festivals I've been to have had some degree of mud issue resulting in some degree of infrastructure breakdown.

Burning Man is in a dry alkali lakebed way out in the middle of nowhere. Normally it's extremely hot and dry the entire time, the ground isn't dirt but a very fine powder that blows everywhere. When it rains that fine powder turns into this incredibly sticky mud and it becomes extremely difficult to move. It's quite a bit different than your standard muddy field kind of experience.

Apparently because it's alkali dirt, it leads to nasty wounds if it stays on skin for a while. Even in a dry year, people were supposed to use vinegar to clean dust off themselves so it wouldn't cause problems. Who wants to bet that many of the people covered in mud didn't have enough vinegar, or maybe didn't even have any.

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Last time I was out there just because I couldn't find a toilet I just squatted. Of course dig and bury if it's shit. But Def need to walk a ways from the camps if it's still wet.

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