NEVADA-Tens of thousands of people who spent days stranded at the Burning Man festival have started to leave, creating a huge traffic jam in the Nevada desert. Heavy rain created a mud bath at the remote festival site and flooded roads, trapping some 72,000 people there.
Traffic was allowed to leave as of Monday afternoon which prompted a mass exodus from the site. The wait time to leave the festival was five hours as of Tuesday morning. And there were reports of high tensions in the queue. In a statement sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said that exhausted revellers had “lashed out” at each other while stuck trying to leave. He added that “large amounts of property and trash” had been strewn around the festival site, including vehicles that had to be abandoned. “Some participants were unwilling to wait or use the beaten path to attempt to leave the desert and have had to abandon their vehicles and personal property,” he said. The event’s traditional finale - the burning of an effigy - was postponed twice before finally taking place on Monday evening.