Burning Man 2017 continues and ends as normal after horrific fire death

Authorities are investigating the death of a man who rushed past layers of security officers into a massive fire at the Burning Man festival's signature ceremony on Saturday night (2 September 2017). Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, broke through a two-layer security perimeter during the Man Burn event in which a giant, wooden effigy is set ablaze.

Nevada's Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen estimated that there was a crowd of about 50,000 people who were present when the festival's crew of firefighters pulled Mitchell out of the blaze. He was airlifted to the UC Davis hospital burn centre in California, where he died on Sunday morning. The sheriff said doctors confirmed Mitchell wasn't under the influence of alcohol, but a toxicology report is pending. "We don't know if it was intentional on his part or if it was just kind of induced by drugs. We're not sure of that yet," Allen said.

Mitchell was a US citizen who had a home in Oklahoma but apparently was living in Switzerland with his wife, the sheriff's office said.

Attempts to rescue Mitchell were hampered because part of the structure was falling while they were trying to get Mitchell out of it, the sheriff's office said. "Rescuers had to leave him to allow the structure to fall and provide for rescuer safety before they could go back into the flames to extract Aaron from the debris," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Attendees have tried before to run into the flames while the man is burning and there have been reported injuries from people trying to get a piece of the spectacle as a token and going through the hot coals.

Allen said it's a problem that the organisers have tried to contain by having their own rangers stage a human-chain to prevent people from getting to the fire. Allen said that this is the first time someone has gotten through like this and the only fatality that he's aware of in his 15 years with the county.

"People try to run into the fire as part of their spiritual portion of Burning Man," Allen said. "The significance of the man burning, it's just kind of a rebirth, they burn the man to the ground, a new chapter has started. It's part of their tenets of radical self-expression."

Burning Man organisers went ahead with the burning of The Temple on Sunday night, another signature event that signals the end of the nine-day festival.

More than 70,000 people attended the art and music celebration in the Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Reno.

Known for eclectic artwork, offbeat theme camps, concerts and other entertainment, Burning Man began in San Francisco before moving to Nevada in 1990. Over the years as the event grew in popularity, deaths and crime have been reported, ranging from car crashes to drug use.