Chris Rock and Diplo escape Burning Man by riding behind the fan’s pickup truck
Chris Rock and Diplo escaped the treacherous, mud-filled Burning Man at the flooded Nevada desert festival with the help of a fan on Saturday.
The comedian, 57, and DJ, 44, marched through 6 miles of mud looking for someone to take them with them as weather left around 73,000 people stranded at the festival.
Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, shared a video on his Instagram of him and Rock, who was wearing a New York Knicks jacket, sitting in the back of a pickup truck with five other people and bags full of gear.
“A fan offered Chris Rock and I a ride out of Burning Man in the back of a pickup truck,” the DJ wrote in an Instagram video.
“I actually walked the curb for hours with my thumbs out because I have a show in DC tonight and I didn’t want to let you all down.”
“Thanks also to that guy who made the smart purchase of a truck not knowing he was there for that precise moment,” added Diplo.
Heavy rain flooded the normally dry country, forcing organizers to postpone the eponymous ceremony of the event to be postponed, and thousands of attendees were ordered to seek shelter on the spot.
One person died at the festival, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said the death occurred “during this rain event.” according to NBC San Diego.
The anonymous fan’s truck was a lifeline for the DJ as he sped back to civilization, flying to Washington, DC at 9 p.m. Saturday night for his show on Echostage.
“Nobody made it out of Burning Man, they didn’t think we’d walk 6 miles through the mud…nobody thought we’d come to DC for the show tonight,” Diplo wrote in an Instagram Story post a private jet. “but god did”
Taking to his own Instagram story, Rock shared a video of the flooded desert after the monsoon storms swept across the “Silver State.”
The extreme conditions at the campsites forced officials to close the entrance to the temporary metropolis for the final two days of the festival.
“Due to recent rainfall, the Bureau of Land Management and Pershing County Sheriff’s Office officials have closed the entrance to Burning Man for the remainder of the event,” the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook.
According to the authority, the Black Rock Desert has been under flood surveillance since Sunday morning National Weather Servicewith more rain in the forecast.
The dried up lake, where the festival is held every year, was inundated by 20cm of water by a storm from Friday night to Saturday, turning the normally hot and dry country into a muddy nightmare.
Burning Man is described as an annual gathering of people in the Black Rock Desert where a temporary metropolis for community, art, self-expression and self-reliance is being built as a crucible of creativity.
