At Burning Man sometimes something happens that is so totally unexpected and delightful you shake your head in wonderment. Interviewing the medical director of Emergency Services at Burning Man this year we both got a jolt of “Playa Magic.”
The doctor’s name is Jeff Westin and before we started the interview I had to ask “Are you any relation to Dr. Wilbur Westin?” And then looks at me with amazement and wonder and asks “How do you know my grandfather?”
I explain to him that Dr. Wilbur Westin was my orthopedic surgeon at the Los Angeles unit of Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children from 1955 to 1963. I had met Dr. Westin’s children, including Jeff Westin’s dad, at that time. It seems Jeff Westin’s dad and Jeff’s brothers all became doctors. With this moment of “Playa Magic” over we went on with the interview.
The medical director warned me “some government folks” would be making an unexpected visit and he might have to cut the interview short and sure enough, five minutes into the interview he was called away. I was lucky he left me in the hands of Margy Morris, Medical Branch Chief for Emergency Services and she answered my questions.
Imagine this folks…70,000 people plopping down in a desert dry lake bed, a playa, for two weeks more than 100 miles north of Reno NV. While a Burning Man Principle like Radical Self-Reliance is understood by most Burners when you trip over a tent stake in the dark and you are sure you just broke your ankle your first instinct is to think “Hell, Reno is a long ways away…” and then you remember the phrase “the Playa Provides” and danged if there isn’t a couple of trailers and tents called Ramparts (named after the old “Emergency” TV series) with doctors and medical equipment ready to help you and your aching ankle…for free.
For more than a decade Dr. Westin and his staff have been handling mishaps in Black Rock City and making decisions about who stays and who is sent on to regional hospitals by ground or air ambulances. There have always been first-aid services since Burning Man began in the desert and for many years Humboldt General Hospital in Winnemucca was a partner of the Burning Man organization for many years but now Renown medical system in Reno is the destination for emergency cases from the Playa. Royal Alliance ambulances provides services in Black Rock City. Dr. Westin was quick to point out 97% of all injuries occurring at the event on the Playa are treated by Ramparts.
You’d be amazed at their operations in air conditioned trailer units with x-ray, ultrasound, a lab, pharmacy, and patient beds. Ramparts cares for about 3,000 Burners every year with 40 beds available. I know…I was one of those patients six years ago. I have shoulders that have been dislocated more than once. That year sitting on a pile of pillows I was awkwardly stretching behind me to pick up something and tumbled over…,the wrong way…and knocked my arm out of whack. My fellow campers loaded me into a golf cart and got me to Ramparts. I was examined, x-rayed, and with a traction/contraction procedure with blankets my arm was back in its proper position in a half hour I was back in camp. The doctor directing everything was a visiting Maori man from New Zealand with full facial native tribal tattoos. It was memorable both for the doctor and the speed with which I was taken care of.
Ramparts prides itself in getting patients in and out was quickly as possible, They are there for build week, the actual Burning Man event week, tear down, and provide care in a smaller manner for restoration workers cleaning up the Playa into October. They get daily inspections from the NV Dept. of Public Health.
I won’t bore readers with the myriad of details for providing medical care for a small city. Yes, people die, and perhaps babies are born. (There are rumors of VERY pregnant women arriving with their midwives.) There is a paid medical staff at the top of the Emergency Services structure, but there are also hundreds of volunteers. I heard a long convoluted explanation of medical reciprocity regulations…how some licenses and certifications are recognized by the state of NV while others are not. It would not be surprising to find the helpful volunteer at Ramparts who is bandaging your gash is an ER Room nurse in another state, but volunteering their time in Ramparts because off-duty they get to join the greatest party of earth.
Along with lacerations, bike injuries, and dehydration there are mental health challenges. A camp called Zendo for years had helped campers with mental health challenges and drug complications while working with Ramparts. The Black Rock Rangers, the peace-keeping corps on the Playa, have training to deal with mental health crisis patients. The camp I belong to, Mobility Camp, provides wheelchairs, crutches and knee scooters to injured people and we have done so for 20 years. There are first-aid stations in outlying areas of Black Rock City for minor injuries and “quick recovery vehicles” available to move medical staff around. This year, on a somber note, I’d bet half the camps on the Playa had Narcan kits available.
For 2024 statistics Ramparts noted under 50 people were sent by Royal Ambulance to Reno, of which 18 folks were medi-vac’d out by copter. In the past Ramparts said they offered “dynamic approaches to austere medicine.” While 20% of the combined Ramparts staff is new every year some folks have been returning there for 25 years. They are professional when they need to be and fun-loving Burners there rest of the time.
So enough about Ramparts-now for the fun stuff. Here, in no particular order, were observations I made looking at the human parade going by my camp. E-bikes over ran the Playa this year. Those batteries make pedaling easier but also make them go WAY too fast. The speed limit of 5 mph in Black Rock City was ignored. Crashes occurred from inattention. I saw more tattoos on men and women than ever before. People bicycled by in business suits (why?), pontifical garb, graduation cap and gowns, dressed like astronauts, in prom dresses and tuxedos, and naked. It’s comical watching someone ride a bike on a bumpy road with one hand on the handle bar and one hand balancing the drink someone just handed them.
Now my 10th yearly report on Burning Man would not be complete without more of a “what I saw, heard, ate, experienced…” contribution. As an old lady I only go to “tame” camps and events and I’m in bed by 10 p.m. and not out carousing. My son Matti took me to a “High Tea” for moms whose kids had brought them to Burning Man. We balanced china tea cups on crystal plates with crustless sandwiches of cream cheese and cucumber as we talked about doing Burning Man with our kids. (Mobility Camp had a family with three generations attending.)
Fun stuff this year? Choose between a Sea Shanties and Maritime sing-along or a drunken Disney movie song fest. Listen to a lecture on the ethnobotany of native plants in the area or a talk about system dynamics. Learn sushi rolling or Dutch Oven cooking and then eat the results. I didn’t hear the Alpine Sunrise Yodeling flash mob but they were out there. I hadn’t played the Asian board game of “Go” in 40 years but found a place to re-learn it on the Playa.
Food is ever abundant and free. Beignets were being passed out fresh out of the fryer every day two camps away from us. There was Turkish coffee, aqua frescas and coconut pancakes, Spam musubi, a Kombucha happy hour, Pakistani BBQ bites, Biscuits and Gravy Brunch, and more, with every kind of intoxicating drink imaginable and ever popular home brew beer camps. The camp next to me serves an excellent Nettle Beer made from stinging nettles, cleavers and burdock.
My son and I attended the Battle of the Marching Bands. They were short a band so threw 50 kazoos into the crowd. If you caught one you were called forward and instantly became part of the Kazoo Marching Band that with 30 seconds of practice played “You Are My Sunshine” as they marched in a circle. They didn’t win but my son can now say he participated in a Black Rock City band concert.
Ever see Sock Wrestling? Four players sitting on big yoga mats put on bright orange socks. The idea of the game is to steal the other players socks while keeping you own socks on. You can rise on your knees but no higher. Lose your socks and you are out of the game and off the mats. Last person with one sock on wins. This game was one step short of vicious and hysterically funny as four men played it. Then it was three men and one woman and she had obviously studied self-defense moves and men were hesitant about what they could grab, but she finally lost her socks. Then it was three men and a 12 year old boy and that kid was fast and there was a well fought battle with the kid winning…of course.
There are camps for every sexual persuasion with a Pussy Day Spa, the Orgy Dome, black light body painting, and a life size animatronic raptor dinosaur you could ride if you were naked. Then there was the naked mile run passing by with lots of folks in hats, shoes, sunscreen, and nothing else.
I spent 13 days on the Playa this year, my longest visit ever. I loved it, even the wasted day hiding in my van for hours while 40 mph winds created white-outs. I want to go back Burning Man again, and again, and again. Little old ladies can wish, can’t they?
Be First to Comment