Organizers are blunt about the location on the event’s website: “It’s one of the most strikingly beautiful and utterly ethereal locations in the world that will ever try to kill you.”
Burning Man
advises attendees that “ultimately the responsibility for your personal health and safety falls to you,” part of the event’s “spirit of radical self-reliance.”
While the festival provides “essential safety infrastructure” including porta potties, ice for sale and on-site first responders, amenities are few and far between. Revelers are typically reliant on the gear they’ve brought themselves. Facilities for handwashing and showering are the responsibility of individual camps.
The festival suggests a long list of gear for each attendee, including food and beverages, an “extensive” first aid kit, warm clothing and fire extinguishers.
Additionally, “Burners,” what the event dubs attendees, should bring a “poop bucket,” especially in case rain makes porta potties inoperable. The website recommends a 5-gallon utility bucket with a lid and garbage bag liners.
One epidemiologist says the situation could turn even uglier if the revellers aren’t extradited from the festival ground quickly.
“This worries me the most. Food and water can be air dropped worst case, but lack of working port-a-potty toilets at Burning Man due to the flooding could spell complete disaster if people can’t evacuate and toilets can’t be fixed,” Eric Feigl-Ding posted on Twitter.
“Granted some have RV’s with their own toilets, but half of the 70,000 people stuck there do not. If sewage builds up, and more rain arrives to wash the raw sewage through the 70k-person makeshift city, then there could be an infectious disease disaster in a week.
“Thus, more rain Sunday means this worst-case scenario could be a reality if we don’t act fast to airlift toilets into BRC or fix the port-a-potty crisis, ASAP.”
