Spokes wrote:The Wednesday night art burn was certainly a cluster fuck. They lit it up in a full on blow and then promptly dashed in with a fire truck, lights and horn blaring and put it out half burned. I couldn't figure out if somebody actually thought it wouldn't scatter embers for half a mile when they lit it or if some of the burning parts showed up in the Temple and somebody thought it might go up too. Inside info anybody?
I was part of the camp that built the Teardrop and I worked on it (in a very minor way).
Here's what happened:
The burn was scheduled with the BORG (which is why you saw it in the official programme What - Where - When) but they somehow forgot to tell the fire guys.
We got out there and did our thing -- sure it was blowing a bit, but we've burned tons o shit in the past in way worse conditions -- remember the temple of tears, for example? Anyway, we waited until the wind died down a little -- still blowing, but not a problem.
We lit it up and it was burning quite happily. The outside of the sculpture was made of cotton and cardboard, and some pieces of this were blowing away in the general direction of the Temple, which was over half a mile away and in no danger -- the embers were all out after 50 ft or so, and the wind kept them low to the ground.
Over at the Temple, the Gerlach Fire Dept saw this raging fire erupt. These guys had never been to BM before, and this was the first burn of the week. They radioed their dispatcher, who was apparently in Reno, who told them to go put it out. So they did.
They didn't just put it out though, they set on it like there was a baby trapped inside. Makes sense if you're putting out a housefire, but this was a sculpture on the playa. I can personally assure you there was no baby trapped inside.
By the time they got there, all the bits that were flying off as embers were done with, and it was just a bunch of wood burning happily. Nonetheless, they soaked the thing, then proceeded to pull it apart to remove the fuel.
Inside the teardrop was an iron lotus that was supposed to emerge from the burn. It was in the process of doing that in a really cool way (the petals kind of flopped open once the burnable stuff that had been holding them up was gone) when they put it out. Then they started to pull and yank at this sculpture to get inside it, causing structural damage (bent metal, broken petals -- it was there all week as a firepit if you saw it; it wasn't supposed to be all twisted like that -- the overzealous fire guys did that).
So it was a clusterfuck all right -- a bureaucratic breakdown that pretty much epitomizes the behomoth burning man has become. sure it's safer -- the default is to put the fucker out -- but it removes the possibility of responsibility and creativity from the "participants".
(don't get me started about the insane bureaucracy ... or do actually... maybe it's time to start another thread...)
emoticon in its latest version of Windows XP (click here for the BM emoticon thread).
