Vehicles line up to leave the site of the annual Burning Man Festival on September 5, 2023, after heavy rains turned the site in Nevada’s Black Rock desert into a mud pit.Photo:JULIE JAMMOT/AFP via Getty
JULIE JAMMOT/AFP via Getty
Leon Reece was found unresponsive in the Black Rock Desert on Friday around 6:24 p.m. local time as the area was inundated with rain, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said in a statement Monday night, perThe Daily Beast,The New York Postand theReno Gazette-Journal.
“Pershing County dispatch received a call regarding a male subject who was on the ground and unresponsive at the Burning Man Festival and medical personnel were administering CPR to the male,” Allen said in his statement, per thePost.
An autopsy is being conducted, but his toxicology results could take six to eight months to complete, according to thePost.
The Washoe County Regional Medical Examiner’s Office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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A day after Reece died, attendees were advised to “conserve food, water, and fuel, and shelter in a warm, safe space,” with access to and from the event closed due to the rainstorms that began on Friday.
CNNreported the area received two to three months' worth of rain — up to 0.8 inches — in just 24 hours between Friday and Saturday morning.
TheBurning Man websitedescribes the city as “a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression and self-reliance” that attracts thousands of festival-goers every year.Travel Nevadanotes that more than 70,000 people attend Burning Man annually.
After thousands were left stranded over the weekend in foot-deep mud, attendees were able to leave Black Rock City, organizers announced in anupdate on Monday.
According to the festival, over 36,000 people remained at the site as of 2 p.m. local time Tuesday, though theGazette-Journalnoted that long wait times for the exit are standard.
As of Tuesday morning, theBurning Man Trafficaccount on X, formerly known as Twitter, estimated the wait time as five hours due to the “exodus” traffic jam. By Wednesday morning, that haddropped to about 20 minutes.
source: people.com
