Last year, after two years of being cancelled thanks to the pandemic, Burning Man made a triumphant return — which is to say nothing newsworthy happened. This year wasn’t so lucky. Starting Friday, and continuing intermittently through Sunday, severe rainfall pummeled the grounds, turning the playa into a muddy hellscape that made transportation impossible. Tens of thousands of revelers were stranded. There was one death. But some more famous participants managed to escape relatively early on.
Diplo and Chris Rock were among those able to successfully skedaddle from the grounds. It wasn’t easy. The former went on CNN to tell the story of their herculean journey, and to reveal who else was with them:
“[Rock] had his New York Knicks jacket on and he just got up with us and started walking. And we walked about three hours in the mud. He was happy. It was me, I think Cindy Crawford walked with us. Kaia Gerber, Austin Butler, Randy Gerber, a writer, a couple of producers from TV, a couple of people who just wanted to get home to their children. They didn’t take no for an answer.
CNN’s Nick Watt explained what happened next: “So those walkers managed to get to an actual road out of the mud after a few hours, and a guy in a passing pickup truck apparently recognized DJ Diplo and gave them a ride, and eventually they all made it to Reno.”
For the record, that’s not just a random assortment of names: Crawford is married to Gerber, and their daughter is Kaira, who is dating Butler.
Many weren’t so lucky. As of this writing, the 70,000 attendees who’d been told to shelter in place were still awaiting the mass exodus. Some weren’t in any rush.
“But some people are going to stick it out a little bit longer because they plan to burn the man tonight,” Watt explained. “So there are people who want to stay there until the end, and you know, they’ll just be praying for no more rain. And there is no more rain in the forecast.”
However this ends, it will make for a riveting documentary — or maybe even two ones à la the dueling Fyre Festival docs.
(Via Mediaite)
Source: https://uproxx.com/viral/austin-butler-cindy-crawford-kaia-gerber-escaped-burning-man/
