Fears ailing Burning Man festival is cursed as 20 hour wait times, rain turning desert into thick clay and dust storms batter event

Thousands of people, from influencers to artists and partygoers alike, descend on the Nevada desert every year to attend the iconic Burning Man festival.

But the annual week-long event has become synonymous with chaos in recent times as wild weather continues to plague the arts and music festival year after year.

Burning Man was torn apart by sand storms and 50mph winds just one day into this year’s event, forcing attendees – known as ‘Burners’ – to evacuate their campsites.

Festivalgoers were seen battling the apocalyptic scenes in ski goggles and surgical masks as a wall of blowing dust destroyed several structures.

Rain turned the dusty surface of the playa into a thick clay, making the terrain nearly impossible to pass through. 

Some people waited over 20 hours in standstill traffic before being allowed to enter the campground, while others were turned away completely amid the congestion.

The nightmarish scenes followed another disastrous weather event two years ago, when torrential rain turned the dessert into a swampland.

The festival has also been struck with tragic fatalities over the years, with a woman dying from an asthma attack on the first day of the 2024 event.

A reveler was killed in 2017 after he ran into the flames of the 75-foot wooden ‘burning man’ effigy, while another died in 2014 after being struck by a car.

‘Burning Man is always cursed. I don’t understand why people are still going,’ TikToker Annejali Yoga said after news of the storms broke out. 

Yoga, who attended the festival with friends in 2009, said they did not have to ‘deal with crazy dust storms or crazy mud floods’.

‘It was perfect weather every year we went,’ she added, before pointing out how this year’s festival was just the latest in a string of events to be ruined by storms.

‘I’m starting to think that they’re cursed and we shouldn’t be doing these things anymore.’ 

Saturday’s dust storm caused at least four minor injuries, with some partygoers describing how they couldn’t see further than a foot away. 

Cars were parked in miles-long lines of traffic on the road leading into Black Rock Desert as they hoped to enter the gates to the campground.

Most festival goers waited an average of eight hours, though some say they were stopped for up to 20 hours.

An attendee who was reportedly the fourth car in the queue told SF Gate how he waited more than 19 hours to pass through the entrance gates.

He recalled how officials knocked on his window and told him to ‘prepare to hunker down for the night’, noting how he accumulated several bottles of pee in his car.

Burners who took the bus into the festival were forced to walk through half-inch mud from the best stop to their campsites, with many complaining that their luggage and camping supplies were lost during transport.

Extreme winds, lightning strikes and heavy traffic caused delays again on Sunday and Monday with entrance wait times reportedly at around six hours.

 Dramatic videos posted online showed festival-goers being battered by fierce winds as their belongings were coated in a thick film of dust. 

Several structures could be seen already destroyed, with some gazebos being reduced to metal tent frames after fierce winds stripped away the tarp. 

One man posted a selfie showing his face covered in dust, and images circulated of men wearing cargo pants huddled in a van while waiting for the storm to pass. 

As storms worsened, officials urged Burners to secure their tents and personal belongings. They were also advised not to travel throughout the festival site and to expect sudden reductions in visibility if they were there already.

At least one large art installation was ruined by the storm – an eight-ton inflatable thundercloud called ‘Black Cloud’, by Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai. 

The 15-foot-high piece was designed to symbolize ‘unseen threats and looming catastrophes’ but it was torn apart within 15 minutes of arriving at the festival. 

It stood in Kyiv’s historic Sophia Square in June, producing flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder in evocation of war, before being transported to the US.

The current sand storms come after the festival was hit with flash floods the previous two years, which turned the site into a swamp and washed out the only route in, causing major traffic jams.

Torrential rains overwhelmed the Nevada desert in 2023, turning the dust into clay leaving 73,000 revelers are trapped in the mud.

Festivalgoers ditched their shoes that keep getting stuck in the mud and desperately tried to conserve their food and water supplies.

The portable toilets on the festival site also weren’t able to be cleaned or emptied because service trucks could not reach them – creating ‘foul’ conditions in the playa.

Campers had their tents and structures breached due to the pouring rain, leaving many people tired, wet, and muddy. 

Some revelers suffered from hypothermia and at least one person died in the ordeal.

The week-long annual festival, which this year runs from Sunday, August 24 to Monday, September 1.

The event is held in a temporary city named Black Rock which is constructed in the middle of the desert, and is traditionally meant to encourage ‘community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.’

The arts and music festival, which began in 1986, was started by Larry Harvey and Jerry James who built a wooden human effigy and set it on fire on San Francisco’s Baker Beach as a symbolic act of letting go of their personal crises. It it often referred to as the ‘First Burn.’

The tradition has long continued and now participants build elaborate artistic structures themselves before the event culminates in the burning of a 75-foot wooden effigy called ‘The Man.’

But in 2017, the ceremonial burning was marred by tragedy when a reveler leapt into the flames of the blazing effigy.

The man, identified as 41-year-old Aaron Joel Mitchell, ran through a human-chain of security officers and into the flames during the Man Burn event.

Crowds were horrified when the reveler made a beeline for the giant wooden effigy and was engulfed by the flames on Saturday night.

He had to dodge a number of rangers and law enforcement personnel in order to reach the fire, which stretches approximately 50 feet into the air.  

Mitchell was rescued by firefighters and later died at the UC Davis hospital burn center in California.

The original Burning Man festivals in the late eighties were attended by just a few hundred people, but numbers ballooned to more than 10,000 in the nineties. 

Figures rose each year with the exception of Covid cancellations in 2020 and 2021, to a climax of 75,000 people in attendance for the 2022 event. 

However, recently attendance has dropped off a little, with 73,000 Burners recorded in 2023, and 72,000 last year.  

This year’s figure is estimated between 70,000 and 80,000. 

Daily Mail has approached festival organizers for comment.