*Featured Cover Photo Credit: Ashley Harrell / SFGATE
On September 2nd, the Labor Day holiday, tens of thousands of Burning Man attendees enjoyed their last day at the festival’s playas. While departing (or trying to depart), the Burning Man attendees faced a heavy dust storm that affected traffic significantly. According to an article from The Daily Beast, the attendees faced delayed traffic times of up to 10 hours getting off-site. Not just that, the dust storm affected the visibility of the Burning Man attendees trying to leave by reducing it to just five feet.
Burning Man Traffic‘s account on X (formerly Twitter) had a post at 07:24 p.m yesterday that had a travel time of “6 hours from Greeters to pavement”. The account at 08:21 p.m. also uploaded another updated post that also shown an expected travel time of 6 hours too, in addition to the frequent posts that showed 4-5 hour commute times as well. According to another article from SFGATE editor Ashley Harrell, who attended this year’s festival with her partner, the dust storm started during the Temple Burn on Friday night, August 30th. Since then, even during the famous burning of “The Man” statue, the dust storm still continued, much to the detriment of the Burning Man attendees trying to leave Black Rock City as quickly as possible.
Current status of the Burning Man dust storm situation
As of this current moment, Burning Man Traffic’s X account now has travel-time updates that state “1 hour from Greeters to pavement”. For the Burning Man attendees, the dust storm is another hectic event on and around the playas that have made their experiences in the 2024 edition something that will live on in their memories for a very long time. Earlier in the week, during the first day of the festival to be exact, an attendee died after she was found unresponsive and the attendee’s death occurred after the festival began after a 12-hour delay due to rain and muddy conditions. In addition, The Mirror reported that a man named Samer Naouri got under arrest for false imprisonment, kidnapping, and abduction, as well as a drug-related offense.
Furthermore, a woman named Susie Holland had to pay a fine of $1,500 to the Nevada Transportation Authority and the impound lot for giving rides to people who were heading to Black Rock City for cash without a proper permit (under Nevada transportation regulations). For the majority of the Burning Man attendees who were trying to leave, even after packing all of their things into their vehicles/trailers/RVs, the dust storm have probably affected their physical and mental well-beings. The same goes if they hitchhiked or taking the bus (or ridesharing) as well. If they do plan on returning to Black Rock City next year, or anyone who is planning to attending their first Burning Man, preparing for worst-case traffic/storm scenarios should be an important task for them to include in their plans.
