A FIERY DEATH AT FEST
Eventgoer leaps into pyre
A BURNING MAN reveler died Sunday after jumping into the flames from the annual Nevada festival’s signature effigy.
Firefighters and other rescue crews chased Aaron Mitchell, 41, who slipped through a safety perimeter and sprinted toward the fire at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
Graphic images show the man diving head-first into the flames, which were about 50 feet high.
Black Rock City fire crews rescued the man, and he was treated at the scene and airlifted to a burn center, the festival said in a statement posted to its website.
Police said Mitchell was an Oklahoma resident living with his wife in Switzerland.
Mitchell died at the University of California-Davis Medical Center burn facility, officials said.
He was not under the influence of alcohol, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A complete toxicology report was pending.
The 50-foot wooden effigy is a centerpiece of the festival, which attracts tens of thousands of people to the Nevada desert each year.
On Sunday, event organizers made “emotional support teams” available to attendees.
“We’re aware this incident has affected not only those who responded immediately on the scene, but also those who witnessed it,” the group said in a statement.
“Now is a time for closeness, contact and community. Trauma needs processing. Promote calls, hugs, self-care, check-ins, and sleep,” the statement concluded.
Other scheduled large-scale “burns” were canceled until noon Sunday.
Mitchell is not the first participant to take the Burning Man festival literally.
In 2003, two people died and four were hospitalized after accidents with aircraft and the “MadMax” mutant vehicles that ramble around the makeshift city.
Burning Man was first held on Baker Beach in San Francisco in 1986. The annual gathering has since exploded in popularity with 70,000 people attending the art and music celebration in the Black Rock Desert this year, according to event organizers.
It was moved to the popup city in one of the most remote parts of the country about 120 miles north of Reno in 1990.
The nine-day counterculture festival espouses 10 principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation and immediacy.
In recent years, the festival has attracted some deep-pocketed attendees.
Volunteers constructed a temporary airport runway in the desert for those looking for a quick entrance. They typically stay in a “plug-n-play” camp where events are catered.