Ailing Burning Man festival faces fresh nightmare as 50MPH DUST STORM trashes art and camp sites

Burning Man is being torn apart by sand storms just one day into the iconic festival, with 50mph winds tearing up tents and trashing art. 

Thousands of attendees have been weathering apocalyptic scenes, with some wearing ski goggles and surgical masks to brace against the storm.  

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned that a 'wall of blowing dust' from Smoke Creek and Black Rock Desert would move over the site on Saturday and Sunday. 

Campsites which were erected on the eve of the celebration were damaged by the dust storm as it tore through the Nevada desert before the festival even began. 

The NWS advised attendees - known as 'Burners' - not to travel to the area, and to expect sudden reductions in visibility if they were there already.   

Dramatic videos posted online showed festival-goers being battered by fierce winds as their belongings were coated in a thick film of dust. 

Several structures could be seen already destroyed, with some gazebos being reduced to metal tent frames after fierce winds stripped away the tarp. 

One man posted a selfie showing his face covered in dust, and images circulated of men wearing cargo pants huddled in a van while waiting for the storm to pass. 

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the dust storm caused at least four minor injuries, and that some partygoers said they couldn't see further than a foot away. 

At least one large art installation was also ruined by the storm - an eight-ton inflatable thundercloud called 'Black Cloud', by Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai. 

The 15-foot-high piece was designed to symbolize 'unseen threats and looming catastrophes' but it was torn apart within 15 minutes of arriving at the festival. 

It stood in Kyiv's historic Sophia Square in June, producing flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder in evocation of war, before being transported to the US.

Burning Man is an annual event held since 1986 focused on community, art, expression and self-reliance, held in the temporary Black Rock City in Nevada. 

Participants build elaborate artistic structures, and the event culminates in the burning of a 75-foot wooden effigy called 'The Man'. 

The original Burning Man festivals in the late eighties were attended by just a few hundred people, but numbers ballooned to more than 10,000 in the nineties. 

Figures rose each year with the exception of Covid cancellations in 2020 and 2021, to a climax of 75,000 people in attendance for the 2022 event. 

However, recently attendance has dropped off a little, with 73,000 Burners recorded in 2023, and 72,000 last year. 

This year's figure is estimated between 70,000 and 80,000. 

The current sand storms come after the festival was hit with flash floods the previous two years, which turned the site into a swamp and washed out the only route in, causing major traffic jams. 

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