Fact Check: Downpour at Burning Man leads to flooding of old, unrelated videos

At the 2023 Burning Man festival in the US, an annual week-long art event in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, things turned chaotic because of a weather anomaly. Heavy rains led to flooding in the campsite, the festival site's entrance was closed, and attendees were urged to conserve water, food, and fuel.

Amid the chaos, conspiracy theories emerged online, with many claiming there was an Ebola outbreak at the festival. People also shared alleged photos and videos from the festival site, many of which had nothing to do with Burning Man at all.

In this report, we will fact-check three such videos that were widely shared on social media.

CATWALK OVER THICK MUD

One video that went viral showed what looked like models performing a fashion show on a muddy terrain. A Twitter user shared this video and wrote, "Check this catwalk over thick mud at the Burning Man festival in Nevada in the midst of natural disasters like a flood and purported Ebola."

With the help of a keyword search, we found a similar video uploaded to a YouTube channel on October 3, 2022. According to the channel, the video was from the Paris Fashion Week.

Taking a cue from this we searched further and found multiple media reports from October 2022 that had carried photos and videos similar to the now viral clip. According to a New York Times report, the video was from the Paris Fashion Week show held in October 2022 in a muddy pit. This particular show was organised by the high-end fashion brand Balenciaga. Denma Gvasalia, Balenciaga's creative director, explained that the show was a “metaphor for digging for the truth and being down to earth”.

CAR STUCK IN HEAVY MUD

The second video shows the wreckage of a vehicle stuck in heavy mud in a desert. The car’s tyres appeared to be missing. The vehicle was also covered in mud. Those sharing it also claimed this was from the Burning Man festival this year.

The oldest version of this video that we could find using a reverse image search was from August 16. The video was shared on an Albanian Instagram account called "trokas_chihuahua," which we observed uploads automobile-related content. The account, however, did not provide any information about the video, including where it was from.

So, while we couldn’t ascertain where and when this video was shot, it’s clear that it predates the Burning Man festival that began on August 27, 2023.

ROAD FLODED WITH GARBAGE

The third video shows a road flooded with garbage. It was shared on Twitter with the text: "New video just released of people trying to flee Burning Man caught in a river of trash. This is how Ebola spreads!"

With the help of a reverse image search, we found the same video uploaded to an Instagram account called "justgrabbits" on November 21, 2018. According to this account, the video showed heavy rainfall that hit Port-au-Prince, the capital of the Caribbean country Haiti, on November 14, 2018.

Around the same time, the video was also shared on YouTube and Facebook, with similar claims. While we could not independently verify the location of the video, it very clearly is not from 2023’s Burning Man festival.

AUTHORITIES DIMISS EBOLA SCARE

According to media reports, a public information office from the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert, dismissed the rumours about an Ebola outbreak at Burning Man.

In a statement to a news outlet, a public information officer said, "I can confirm the event entrance was closed for the year because unusual rainfall caused muddy conditions where there was a full stop on vehicles, and not for an Ebola outbreak. We have heard no information of any participants with Ebola."