Revellers are Still Trying to Leave Burning Man Festival – 24 Hours After it Finished

However jealous you may be of the 70,000 who made it to Burning Man Festival this year, there’s no need to be envious of the mass exodus that has left some Burners in up to nine hours of traffic.

The gridlock was partly caused by a 17-year-old going missing who, according to the Reno Gazette Journal, was later found safe in Black Rock City. Twitter account @bmantraffic kept revellers up to date with the situation – tweeting that the exodus time was “estimated at 9 hours”.

To this, many Burners voiced their irritation including TV presenter Erin Sharoni who wrote “We’ve now missed our flight, thanks to an idiot parent who thinks bringing a KID to playa is a good idea. Please restrict this.” She later tweeted “Sat FOR 12 HOURS, missed flight, none avail til Tues”.

Even Tuesday, 24 hours after the festival ended, delays of three to six hours were reported, with many taking to social media to share images of themselves in heinous traffic. A statement on the Burning Man website reads: “There are a finite number of vehicles that can get out of Burning Man and onto Highway 34 per hour. This is a fixed number, and probably won’t change any time in the near future.

“When most people try to leave BRC on the same day, it creates long lines to get off the playa. This usually occurs when the weather is great or the Temple is awesome. We most often see this on Monday of Exodus, though this doesn’t happen every year. It tends to go in a biennial cycle….a great year followed by a bad year, followed by a great year, followed by…you get the point.”

One of the worst exodus reports came from a Twitter user who wrote that after 10 hours of waiting, he remained just half a mile from the pavement. Still jealous?