Thousands of attendees of the Burning Man counterculture music festival are beginning to leave the northern Nevada desert after floods left concertgoers stranded for days.
Officials announced that the virtual lockdown was lifted on Monday afternoon local time after a weekend of rain and mud prevented attendees from leaving the concert venue. Storms rolled in, resulting in impassable roads and over a 5-mile hike to leave the area.
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Sgt. Nathan Carmichael from the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said that he didn’t believe many people would stay for the festival’s customary end-of-event burning in effigy, which was postponed to Monday night, due to the weekendlong isolation, according to CBS News.
The effigy is the burning of a 40-foot man. Officials said it would begin at about 9 p.m. local time on Monday night.
Event organizers said they began letting traffic leave the area at about 2 p.m. local time, despite urging concertgoers to delay their exodus to help ease traffic, according to the Associated Press. The ban on RVs was lifted, and anyone trying to leave on foot should get a ride, with organizers saying they have people to help.
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Organizers estimated a wait time of five hours, two hours after the mass departure of attendees began. Roughly 64,000 people remained at the venue. One death was reported on Sunday, but the person’s identity and cause of death remain unknown as of Monday.
Attendees have been advised not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert, which is about 110 miles north of Reno, as people have done throughout the weekend. The 3,900-acre event has rarely faced a weather event such as this, with organizers asking attendees to preserve food and water.
