Burning Man festivalgoer’s suspected cause of death emerges – live

Three-eyed “dinosaur shrimp” are stirring in the Nevada desert after flooding upended the Burning Man festival.

Triops and fairy shrimp are small crustaceans that can survive years lying dormant in drought conditions. They live in the ground in eggs until weather conditions such as floods can bring them to the surface, says IFL Science.

Danica Patrick, the former racecar driver, described an “epic” Burning Man experience complete with lots of mud thanks to the rain.

“The mud,” Patrick wrote on Instagram complete with several photos showing how deep and messy the mud was during this year’s festival.

“It was beyond memorable!!! The people and purpose make it so. Rain and mud can’t touch the spirit of BM,” Patrick continued.

Diplo managed to escape the Burning Man festival this weekend while some 73,000 attendees were stranded in the playa following heavy downpours in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

A California man likely died at the mud-impacted Burning Man festival from drug intoxication, a coroner’s office has said.

Leon Reece, 32, was found unresponsive on the remote and weather-hit Nevada festival grounds on Friday evening, according to authorities.

The exact cause and manner of Reece’s death are still pending but the Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a statement that drug intoxication was suspected.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in a statement provided to The Independent, confirmed there are no reports of Ebola at Burning Man.

“CDC has not received any reports of Ebola at the Burning Man Festival and has not issued any warnings or had any requests for assistance from the state and local health departments either,” a spokesperson for the CDC said.

“Additionally, we have not received reports of Mpox or Marburg, and to our knowledge a national emergency for the flooding has not been declared.”

Residents of a popular stop-over location for Burning Man attendees have complained about illegal waste being dumped in the neighbourhood after the annual Black Rock Desert event ended this week.

Tents, food and alcohol bottles have all been spotted around Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border and neighbouring Reno, Nevada, in the days following the 2022 addition of Burning Man, business owners, locals and officials told SFGate.

“What I’ve seen are large construction bags of trash, alcohol bottles, tons of food, tents and large aluminum poles from shade structures,” said a business owner in Truckee, California, to the news outlet.

Elon Musk offered lofty praise to the Burning Man festival – after this year’s event descended into disaster with one person dead and thousands left stranded in the Nevada desert after intense floods.

“Burning Man is unique in the world,” Mr Musk wrote on his platform X. “Hard to describe how incredible it is for those who have never been. Best art on Earth.”

The post drew scrutiny for two reasons. First off, it came as the desert festival is suffering from utter chaos on all sides — torrential floods caused by Tropical Storm Hilary, false claims of an Ebola outbreak, tens of thousands of stranded attendees, and even a death caused by reasons “unrelated to the weather.”

On top of this mess, Mr Musk seemed to be commenting on a video from Paris Fashion Week in 2022 — not Burning Man.

An estimated 70,000 “Burners” remained trapped at Burning Man earlier this week after tropical downpours turned the desert landscape into a muddy swamp.

A deluge of rain in the Nevada desert has tested the annual bacchanal’s ethos of “radical self-reliance” like no other in its 35-year history.

While services such as internet and wi-fi were gradually being restored, sodden roads remained too treacherous to pass for the beginning of the traditional “Exodus” from the festival.