Wait Times to Exit Burning Man Drop After Flooding Left Tens of Thousands Stranded in Nevada Desert

Festival goers are helped off a truck from the Burning Man festival site in Black Rock, Nev., on Sept. 4, 2023. Stringr via AP

RENO, Nev.—The traffic jam leaving the Burning Man festival eased up considerably Tuesday as the exodus from the mud-caked Nevada desert entered a second day following massive rain that left tens of thousands of partygoers stranded there for days.

A pair of brothers from Arizona who took their 67-year-old mother with them to Burning Man for the first time spent 11 hours into early Tuesday morning just getting out of the festival site, which is 15 miles (1.6 kilometers) from the nearest city of Gerlach, Nevada.