Andrew Hyde, an attendee stuck at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, said rain has made walking in the mud difficult, but that the harsh weather has taken the meaning of the event back to its roots.
In an interview with CNN’s Paula Newton, Hyde said rain created a “very mucky, muddy, terrible environment where you could barely walk.”
Despite not being able to walk very well through the mud, Hyde said morale at the event is OK, and that there’s generally “no panic” among fellow attendees.
He also said that part of the event is to deal with harsh climate “and you prepare for that. So in many ways, everybody here just kind of made friends with their neighbors and it’s a community event.”
“I think almost everybody really enjoyed having it be extremely harsh, and we don’t know what’s going to happen tonight though, and that’s the big concern,” Hyde said, speaking Saturday evening.
If there’s a medical emergency or if people urgently need to flee, there are ways to do so, Hyde said. “There’s ways to get you out of here,” he told CNN. “The only vehicles allowed on the roads right now are ambulances.”
On Saturday tens of thousands of people attending the Burning Man festival were asked by festival organizers to conserve food, water and fuel as they shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert after a heavy rainstorm pummeled the area, CNN previously reported.
“I think the concern is if we have another, another rain, people really need to get out. People need to go back to their jobs or, you know, back to the responsibilities they have back home. And if they’re delayed another four days, you know, two days, four days, whatever it ends up being — that’s pretty concerning,” Hyde said.
