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Folks, the article is breathless and ridiculous. As someone who is not there, but who has been there four times and run build lead for my camp... Rain is not
by jeremyt 3y ago
Folks, the article is breathless and ridiculous.
As someone who is not there, but who has been there four times and run build lead for my camp...
Rain is not unheard of. It's probably pretty muddy and less fun than it normally would be.
Nobody is starving or dying of dehydration, and there is no danger of that. Most camps (and many people) have a huge surplus of supplies. Last time I was there, I drove out with a few dozen cans of sparkling water that I just didn't get to hand out.
There are PLENTY of supplies.
The worst thing that could happen is that somebody has a medical emergency and are unable to be evacuated until Monday/Tuesday. That's a real concern, but there are plenty of platforms that can land a helicopter if that's necessary.
This isn't the catastrophe calling for FEMA involvement that the article makes it sound like. :rolleyes:
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 3y ago[flagged]
- thinking_ape 3y agoThis is the last 2 days of Burning Man. How on earth would there be plenty of supplies left at this point? I bet most supplies were used up intending to leave tomorrow. If they are stuck there for several days they actually could run out of supplies. This is a weirdly arrogant statement to make.
- geocrasher 3y agoI live about 2 hrs south of BM quite near the route that all the burners take to get to BM. It's rainy, has been for the last two days. But this is Nevada. It'll dry up and be like it never happened in no time.
- somsak2 3y ago> It'll dry up and be like it never happened in no time. With more rain slated for today and Sunday, and the fact that it ends on Monday, I wouldn't be so optimistic.
- geocrasher 3y agoI didn't say it would dry up today, I said it'll dry up quickly when the rain stops.
- lazide 3y agoDry lake beds/playas tend to work differently. The caliche/clay tends to crust over and keep the fun, nasty goo around just under the surface for a lot longer than anyone expects. If someone goes out onto it, they can break through into stuff that doesn’t support any weight. Kind of like if it was thin ice, but it’s actually (mildly) caustic mud. That said, never tested this on that specific playa. It’s also usually somewhat location dependent even within a specific lakebed. Don’t be surprised though if it takes months (next year? If there are followup storms) for some of these vehicles to be extracted.
- oceanplexian 3y agoI live in Utah and have spent a lot of time on and around dry like beds. They do not “dry up quickly”. A quarter inch under the crust is likely going to be mud for weeks or months. Some vehicles might be fine but heavy ones are in deep $&@! until they are recovered. Just my uninformed opinion.
- lazide 3y agoYup. Going to be a lot of rental RV’s that ‘are not going to Burning Man, we promise!’ abandoned out there. Fun times!
- fuckyourprotest 3y ago[flagged]
- floodedburner 3y agoOriginal forecast called for 1 day of rain at .3". Forecast as of now has 3 days of rain and a total of 1". Government involvement will incur a fee to the org. All the BLM LEO rolled off playa to avoid this.
- contravariant 3y agoJust an inch of rain over 3 days doesn't sound that bad. Wind, hail and lightning are more pressing dangers if big thunderclouds develop.
- floodedburner 3y agoOne hundredth of an inch impacts travel on the dried lake bed
- nwallin 3y agoBurning man is in the Black Rock Desert. The Black Rock Desert is an endorheic basin. There are no outflows. The lake bed itself is 1,000 sq miles. The drainage that drains into the lake bed is 11,600 sq miles. An inch of rain isn't a big deal, but when you concentrate it 11:1 it becomes very serious very quickly.
- EricE 3y agoDesert ground is hard and mostly impervious. That 1" of rain will mostly run off from the surrounding area into the now not so dry lakebed. There's a dry lakebed not far from me a little smaller than up there and an inch of rain can easily lead to a foot of standing water if the rain happens over a widespread area in the watershed of that lakebed. I hope they packed stilts!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hgsgm 3y ago[flagged]
- jeremyt 3y agoHave you been to burning man, because it sounds like you have not. Food and water is everywhere. They will not run out unless this thing lasts another week. If some people run out, others will have extra. Of this I am 100% sure.
- giantrobot 3y ago[flagged]
- chmod600 3y agoWe are talking about something on the order of a week here. Are you suggesting that survival-level us-vs-them greed will take hold in that timeframe?
- giantrobot 3y agoHaving met people before, yes.
- pcdoodle 3y agoWe're going to run out of water! How? Because of all the rain!
- eastbound 3y agoIn France, media told us underground water reserves were overflowing after hyping drought for 6 months (tip: if you don’t cherry-pick the stats, there is no more drought than every year). So they argued that drought causes the overflowing of phreatic reserves. Later during the summer we had heavy rains. Now everyone jokes that we have heavy rains due to drought. Seriously I hope the media will stop preaching in one direction. Today they try to demonstrate GW, but miserably fail at it, since they’re commenting weather and not climate. They’re doing more damage than they solve.
- ethanbond 3y agoLack of easy transportation can quickly turn a merely inconvenient or uncomfortable situation into an extremely dangerous one. Break a leg in front of the hospital? Super minor. Break a leg 40 miles from the nearest road? Extremely serious. Mud, especially with huge numbers of people, has a way of turning the former situation into the latter situation rather quickly. Also who’s being breathless? The article didn’t mention FEMA.
- rcme 3y agoBreaking a leg isn't serious if medical transportation is available, and it sounds like it is.
- ethanbond 3y agoSure hope so! You know what can change that though? More mud. No one is asking to fly in the military here or something. People are observing: “oh, that seems like a risky situation that could go very south very quickly.”
- rolph 3y agobreaking a leg or arm can be lethal due to immediate complications or emergent complications due to lack of prompt evaluation and treatment.
- lazide 3y agoSure, but that is not the common situation. One advantage of everything being deep intractable mud - mud is soft! So less chance of compound fractures from a fall at least. Though vehicle recovery is going to be epic. And that is a good way to break/kill people if not done very carefully. I’ve seen (very expensive) vehicles end up completely destroyed and abandoned when someone wandered a bit too far out into a surprisingly wet/soft lakebed (around Ballarat/Trona - I can still see it on Google Maps, and it got stuck well over 20 years ago!), so I imagine we’ll have plenty of stories of drama to snack on popcorn over when this is all said and done.
- jph 3y agoIf you're there, shelter in place, and listen to people who are more experienced. This helps the medics. Typically many medical issues are straightforward to triage and treat with field kits. Then the medics ask the person's friends to drive the person to Reno for more in-depth care. Examples in my experience are twisted ankles, broken arms, alcohol sickness, dehydration, cardiac events, infections, lost prescriptions, overdoses, electrocutions, eye scratches, falls from heights, power tool slips, cold exposure, and of course burns. This year, it turns out the timing of the rain makes for new kinds of challenges for the medics, because they're unable to use many of the transport vehicles that are akin to golf carts. And the medics are currently unable to refer people to Reno. In a city of 70K+ people who planned for 5 days on average, now stuck for 3 more days because of the rain, estimate 50%+ more medical issues. And no way currently to drive to Reno. In parallel, some generators will run out of gas supplies, some portas and bathrooms will run out of supplies and servicing, some heaters will run out of propane, etc. This combination tends to make people uneasy and somewhat irrational. This is why shelter in place is important: it helps reduce accidents and injuries, and helps people to feel calm and think clearly. Help the medics and volunteers by staying put, being more careful than usual, and helping people as you can. The advice to conserve supplies, and keep warm, is not because the whole city is likely to run out or freeze-- it's because medics want to minimize people wandering around the city seeking supplies, and want to keep people in good physical health and good mental health.
- jeremyt 3y agoThat is not a counterpoint. Counterpoint to what? Not sure where I said "don't shelter in place". Not sure where I said "don't listen to people more experienced". All I said is that nobody is going to starve or die of dehydration because they ran out of food/water. I stand behind that.
- thih9 3y agoI also thought your point is to disregard safety measures. Perhaps because your original comment says that the article is ridiculous; and the article, sensationalized or not, advises to “conserve food and water, shelter in a warm space”.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- croes 3y agoThat's all valid as long as people behave rational, what some people don't do in such situations.
- DonHopkins 3y agoGee, I sure hope nobody at burning man is taking mind altering drugs! ;)
- tapatio 3y agoIt’s been impossible for me to get a ticket to attend. How do I increase my odds of getting one? You’re lucky to have gone 4 times already!
- frisco 3y agoYou should find a camp to join that can help coordinate tickets. (Whether Directed Group Sale or just having the network for overflow tickets.) Unless you’re prepared to spend $$$ and suffer through figuring out a lot to truly DIY it, it’ll be a much better experience to be part of a camp that knows what it is doing anyway.
- stickfigure 3y agoBurning man has peaked. This year there were tons of people trying to sell their ticket at discount. Some friends were giving away tickets. I don't think we will see the same demand again. Which is good - 70k people is more than enough. Next year, just watch craigslist or fb marketplace a month beforehand.
- fragmede 3y agoOr maybe people's ability to attend is simply a function of the economy, which is currently in high interest rate territory. The cost to attend is the equivalent of a trip to Europe for a week or a month, depending on how you roll. With things how they are, people simply can't take the time off work or afford to go.
- darkclouds 3y agoYou'll have about 250k people at Glastonbury, but there is alot to do at Glastonbury having been a few times, so 70k sounds rather cosy, which seems so unusual for the US which normally does things bigger and better. Going to Burning Man is something on my bucket list, which is why your comment surprised me, how can you say its peaked?
- llamaimperative 3y ago80% of the time when someone says an event peaked it’s because they’ve aged out of the event or the event evolved in a way that wasn’t to their liking. You should totally go if you get a chance, but to be clear Burning Man is not a music festival a la Glasto. It’s much more of an art festival than anything else, and it’s really spectacular. Also just ignore the lore around anti-capitalism, eco friendly yada yada. It’s a really sick party for super rich people and the artists they patronize.
- Mandatum 3y agoThat’s fine. Until you consider the inability to empty the portaloos.
- jakderrida 3y agoWhile I don't disagree with you at all, the majority of burners are probably not well supplied build leads for their own camps. I went last year and while I was very well supplied and had a large RV with my own solar-powered refrigerator, I met up with friends that were not as wealthy and probably fit the typical profile for burners. They stayed in a tent, were at a camp with a centralized power source with a somewhat strict rationing system. They typically planned out their day such that most meals involved free food prepared using ingredients procured from a service that required driving into the campgrounds to make deliveries every day to many different camps. Many burners depend on water that is also delivered by water trucks that to perform water deliveries that were ordered and scheduled weeks before the event. You may be neglecting that not everybody is well-supplied and could barely afford the ticket and transportation.
- zerbinxx 3y agoWhich is why the “radical self-reliance” thing is so ironic/sad in this situation. Most people aren’t there for that, despite the warnings that RSR is part of the deal, the fact is that anyone who’s particularly interested in that kind of experience is already solo backpacking or something this weekend.
- jakderrida 3y agoDamn... I am man enough to concede that you just Uno-Reversed my argument. You even had the sense not to introduce new thoughts that I could potentially attack out of spitefulness. Extra points, even, because the fact that I didn't think of it first undermines the fact that I attended it last year since I obviously didn't read the principles. I'm more impressed than insulted, btw.
- ShakataGaNai 3y agoThe article seems to be reporting the facts in a fairly reasonable manner. We have friends who are there and they told us this exact same information: They've been told to conserve, no porta-potty cleaning is coming anytime soon, they may not make it out until Wednesday. The article doesn't even say they are running out of supplies, other than the organizers have told people to conserve.
- rhaway84773 3y agoThe only thing breathless seems to be your response to the article. It seems like a pretty straightforward laying out of the facts along with official recommendations and statements.