BLM creating full-time Burning Man job

RENO — The Bureau of Land Management is creating its full-time position dedicated to the annual Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert.

BLM officials say they plan to hire someone to oversee contracts, coordinate law enforcement and maintain safety at the weeklong counterculture festival leading up to Labor Day.

Mark Pirtle, BLM’s interim project manager, says those chores have been handled in the past by a series of BLM workers in the Winnemucca District in addition to the regular jobs.

But he told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Thursday that Burning Man has become so big and complicated that BLM workers can’t continue to operate that way.

Nearly 70,000 people attended the celebration last September about 90 miles north of Reno.