Burning Man's Burning Question: Got Permit? | Wired Magazine | Burning Man 1997

With the Burning Man festival a week away, organizers are undergoing their yearly pre-event scramble for permits, safety measures, volunteers, and site preparation. But this year, there's a difference: The technopagan bacchanal, expecting a crowd of up to 20,000, is on new property, in a new county, which needs new rules and demands higher safety expectations. In order to ensure proper security, the commissioners in Washoe County, Nevada, are dangling the coveted permit like a carrot before Burning Man organizers.

"Remember when you used to cram for exams at the last minute in college? This is the same thing," says Captain Frank Barnes of the Washoe County Sheriff's Department. "I'd anticipate that at next Tuesday's commission meeting the permit will be issued. I think [Burning Man] is trying really hard to do it right.... They just got started a bit late."

Threatening to withhold the required permits and turn back attendees, the county is demanding that Burning Man have a US$10 million insurance policy (with a premium cost of $44,000) - a requirement agreed upon earlier this summer during permit hearings, but which organizers have failed to produce. Other stipulations for the permit have been met in recent weeks and, says Barnes, this is the last obstacle.

Burning Man organizers were unavailable for comment Thursday.

County authorities are already gearing up for the event in the anticipation that it will happen - including an undisclosed number of extra deputies and firefighters (for whom the $300,000-plus cost will come out of Burning Man's gate receipts).

If, however, the permit isn't secured and thousands of revelers show up anyway, Barnes says he's unsure how the federal Bureau of Land Management might deal with an impromptu, unofficial, and unorthodox community taking up camp in the area. Possibilities could include arrests, or simply handing out citations - but the question, of course, would be how to do it.

"It would be interesting, wouldn't it?" chuckled Barnes.