Lost And Found After Exodus

[Davidmanzo]

Hello fellow Burners,

I lost my phone on the BM Playa in 2023. With location tracking, I can see it's at Playa Info Lost and Found located at: (6), but right now I am in San Francisco. Is there a way to contact or retrieve my phone? The webpage https://lnf.burningman.org/ is not working right now.

Thank you.

[Token]

History tells us it will be a good long while before all those found phones get back to SF for processing. Think Months.

[xxxanna123]

Dear Burners,

This Saturday around 2pm we lost a drone - model DJI FPV. If you find it please contact us 6503874165. Thank you so much!

[some seeing eye]

Sorry you lost those items.

Use the internet wayback machine to late September on ePlaya and burningman.org to see the lost and found process last year. It may be similar this year. The board admin who sometimes sets up the lost and found ePlaya topic thread each year has to get back too. This year is a very late exodus.

The Burning Man staff is consumed with getting everything off the playa and various mandatory government activities which have a strict schedule.

To the phone person, all the playa lost and found items are brought to the SF office. Then they are entered into a database. Even though you know it is there, they have a process to prevent false claims that they follow strictly.

So as Mr Token says, it may take time.

[Burn888]

Sorry you lost those items.

Use the internet wayback machine to late September on ePlaya and burningman.org to see the lost and found process last year. It may be similar this year. The board admin who sometimes sets up the lost and found ePlaya topic thread each year has to get back too. This year is a very late exodus.

The Burning Man staff is consumed with getting everything off the playa and various mandatory government activities which have a strict schedule.

To the phone person, all the playa lost and found items are brought to the SF office. Then they are entered into a database. Even though you know it is there, they have a process to prevent false claims that they follow strictly.

So as Mr Token says, it may take time.

My phone got tracked back to Oakland. If the office is in SF does that mean someone else might have my phone, or were you speaking more generally and the lost and found items could be in Oakland this year? Thanks so much

[some seeing eye]

I am an ordinary burner. I'm not with the org, I'm speaking for myself based on past experience. I do not speak for the org.

I have no idea where the BMORG physically takes the found items during the process of attempting to return them to their owners.

In the past at some point the org opens the official lost and found database of photos of found items and their descriptions on Burningman.org and ePlaya opens a 2023 lost and found topic for all the lost and found posts. There is no way to say when that might happen.

I lost my phone for the first time this year a few months ago. I bought another, restored the backup to it, and marked the old phone lost. I did get the old phone back a few days later and returned the new phone to the store for a refund. That is not advice, it's what I did.