The 2023 Burning Man meltdown: A moment-by-moment look at the festival's descent into chaos

Fyre Festival 2.0?

The memes and jokes came fast and furious over the holiday weekend as the annual Burning Man festival was impacted by heavy rains causing a quagmire of sticky mud and calls for attendees to shelter in place and ration their provisions. A mass exodus finally ensued on Monday afternoon, before the eponymous Man burned.

But with more than 70,000 people stranded at one point, a death under investigation and rumors of spreading disease, the situation was deemed perilous enough that President Joe Biden was made aware of the situation.

Here is a breakdown of everything that went down at this year’s Burning Man.

Early signs of trouble

12:01 a.m., Sunday, Aug. 27: The gates open for early arrivals to the annual event, which attracts tens thousands to the desert in northwest Nevada to build a temporary, self-sufficient and art-themed community called Black Rock City. The annual bacchanal, whose tickets start at $575, is scheduled to wrap on Labor Day, with the highlight being the "burning of the Man" — a towering figure of a man whose immolation represents rebirth — slated for Sunday night. The forecast calls for rain, beginning Friday, with up to an inch falling by Saturday morning. While that may not sound like much to some, in a geographic region more commonly beset by dust storms than rain storms, it's the equivalent of a few months' worth of precipitation.

Theoretically, attendees are supposed to be prepared. One of the guiding principles of Burning Man is self-sufficiency: Everyone must pack their own shelter and provisions, including ample food and water. The festival site warns of extreme conditions: "Weather on the playa is often violent and unpredictable. Dust storms, high winds, freezing temperatures, rain, we get it all out there. It’s impossible to be overly prepared when it comes to the elements."

Sunday afternoon, Aug. 27: Activists, protesting the detrimental environmental impact on the fragile desert ecosystem caused by fossil fuels, plastics and other waste, block the two-lane road that is the only way into Burning Man.

"Burning Man should aim to have the same type of political impact that Woodstock had on counterculture," the organization Extinction Rebellion, part of the collective behind the roadblock, says in a statement. "If we are honest about system change, it needs to start at ‘home.’ Ban the lowest-hanging fruit immediately: private jets.”

Traffic is backed up for miles before rangers from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department break down the barricade and arrest the protestors.

The worst is yet to come.

Rainfall

Friday morning, Sept. 1: With the kickoff of the Labor Day weekend, more attendees arrive en masse by car, with the real big-spenders taking private charters to the nearby Black Rock Airport. Also arriving: rain.

"I woke up on Friday, I looked outside the RV and it was kind of shocking how muddy and swampy it was," Carmen, a four-time Burning Man attendee, tells Yahoo Entertainment. "It was clear that you weren't going to go out and do anything. And also, I was staying with a large camp and I heard that one of our large shade structures came down and knocked a bunch of stuff over so it was chaotic."

The parched, powdery ground transforms into thick, ankle-deep mud that is difficult to walk in and nearly impossible to drive through.

Friday evening: Festival organizers announce via social media that the temporary airport and the main gate into the grounds have been closed due to the inclement conditions, urging Burners to "help each other stay safe."

Saturday morning, Sept. 2: Conditions continue to deteriorate. Organizers announce that no vehicles are permitted to enter — or exit — the site.

Celebrity evacuation

Saturday afternoon, Sept. 2: While vehicles were prevented from leaving, some attendees attempted to flee on foot across miles of mud to a paved road where buses were being deployed. And with breaks in the weather, some people take advantage, including DJ and music producer Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz. He posts a video to social media on Saturday evening showing him and actor-comedian Chris Rock riding in the back of a truck, saying they “just walked 5 miles in the mud” before “a fan picked us up.”

Ebola outbreak?!

Saturday afternoon, Sept. 2: Meanwhile, the 72,000 who remain have to deal with deteriorating hygiene conditions. There's a three-eyed "dinosaur shrimp" that reportedly emerges from the muck. Portable toilets are overwhelmed and became disgusting when pump trucks can't reach them for service. Rumors start spreading of an unsubstantiated E. coli outbreak, which is soon conflated into rumors of an equally unsubstantiated Ebola outbreak. Neither turn out to be true.

"I think that's just silly nonsense in my opinion. I'm sure there were things like maybe flu, COVID, I don't know, typical stuff like that I'm sure going around," Carmen tells Yahoo. "But E. coli, no. Ebola, no."

A fatality

Sunday morning, Sept. 3: The festival is shaken by news of a death.

"The Pershing County Sheriff's Office is currently investigating a death which occurred during this rain event. The family has been notified and the death is under investigation. As this death is still under investigation, there is no further information available at this time," according to the sheriff's office.

(On Monday, authorities announced the deceased had been identified as Leon Reece, 32. The local medical examiner performed an autopsy to determine a cause of death and is awaiting results of a toxicology test.)

Speaking to reporters from his home in Delaware, President Joe Biden says he is monitoring the Burning Man situation: "We're in touch with the local people. We're paying attention. We ought to be getting everybody out of there. There was one death; I don't know what the reason for the death was."

Sunday afternoon, Sept. 4: Organizers vow that the burning of the Man is still scheduled to take place Sunday night, despite the forecast calling for "an uncertain weather front." Organizers weigh in on the Ebola rumors: "The online rumors of transmissible illnesses in Black Rock City are unfounded and untrue."

Some attendees report being threatened with an $800 fine as they attempt to drive out of the locked-down site.

Outside observers continue to react on social media, including people comparing it to the failed Fyre Festival.

Sunday evening, Sept. 4: More rain, more flooding. The site remains closed to vehicles attempting to exit. The burning is postponed.

The Man burns (finally)

Monday, Sept. 5: While the driving ban isn't officially lifted until 2 p.m., CNN drone footage showed thousands already in their vehicles and making their way to the gates on Monday morning.

Organizers announce that all of the burns — the Man, the Chapel of Babel and the Temple — are rescheduled for Monday night through Tuesday night, and encourage people to stay until Tuesday to help alleviate congestion.

Monday night, Sept. 5: The burning finally commences to drastically reduced crowds.

The postmortem

As a few holdouts remain for the last of the events early Tuesday, most of the Black Rock playa has emptied out. The memes and social media jokes are beginning to die down. And some who endured the ordeal are saying that it really wasn't that bad.

"I think the news media has jumped at the opportunity to try to just portray this as like a hellscape, horrible Fyre Festival situation and really trying to play up the directness of it," says Carmen. "As somebody who was there and went through all of it, that really wasn't my experience."