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(PERSHING COUNTY, Nev.) — A death was confirmed at the Burning Man festival over the weekend after thousands of attendees were left mired in mud from torrential rains and were advised to conserve food and water, as all roads in and out of the desert arts and “self-reliance” festival remained shut off Sunday.

The sprawling event is held each year in what’s known as Black Rock City (BRC), in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. Following what authorities described as “unusual weather conditions” that produced heavy rains Friday night and into Saturday, the gate and airport into and out of Black Rock City remain closed, organizers said. No driving is permitted at the site except for emergency vehicles.

One person died at the festival, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a statement Sunday morning.

“The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating a death which occurred during this rain event. The family has been notified and the death is under investigation. As this death is still under investigation, there is no further information available at this time,” according to the sheriff’s office.

On Monday, authorities confirmed the deceased had been identified as Leon Reece, 32.

Pershing County Sheriff’s Office deputies performed a preliminary investigation, and interviewed witnesses at the scene and medical responders. Reece’s remains were sent to Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. The results of the autopsy are pending toxicology results.

Reece’s death is still being investigated, authorities said Monday.

News of the death came a day after organizers issued an alarming statement to festival attendees.

“If you are in BRC, conserve food, water and fuel, and shelter in a warm, safe space,” organizers said in a statement posted on X, (formally known as Twitter).

President Joe Biden was briefed on the flooding that has stranded thousands of Burning Man attendees, a White House official said Sunday.

“Administration officials are monitoring the situation and are in touch with state and local officials,” the official added. “Event attendees should listen to state and local officials, and event organizers.”

An estimated 75,000 people attended the annual gathering in 2022, and organizers said they expected as many this year. The festival began on Aug. 28 and is scheduled to run through Tuesday.

Organizers started urging attendees to shelter in place and secure their camps late Friday, as adverse weather conditions moved through the area.

Photos from Burning Man on Saturday showed muddy and wet conditions at Black Rock City and abandoned vehicles in intersections.

Among those who attended this year’s event were Diplo and Chris Rock, who both reportedly fled on foot. The DJ said on X Saturday that he and the comedian walked five miles in the mud to get out of Burning Man before they were picked up by a fan.

Access to Black Rock City will remain closed for the remainder of the event, organizers said, while urging people not to travel to the site.

The Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office decided to close the entrance to Burning Man for the remainder of the event due to the rainfall, Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said in a statement Saturday evening.

Allen said in a statement that the several hours of heavy rain “made it virtually impossible for motorized vehicles to traverse.”

The sheriff said some vehicles have “caused damage to the Playa surface.”

On Sunday night, festival organizers said the roads were expected to open Monday for attendees to leave the area, and they did, a little after 3 p.m. local time.

Significant flooding has been occurring in Las Vegas and surrounding areas as monsoonal rains and storms inundate the Southwest.

The Las Vegas Fire Department confirmed Sunday that one person was found dead in the flooding early Saturday west of downtown Las Vegas. “Upon arrival, a person was found unconscious and unresponsive. It is believed the person is a drowning victim,” the fire department said in a statement, adding that the Las Vegas Metro Police Department and the Clark County Coroner were investigating the death.

Flood watches remained in effect for cities such as Las Vegas and Flagstaff, Arizona through Sunday night. The heavy rain and flash flood potential was then expected to shift northward into northern Utah and southeastern Idaho on Sunday.

Allen said more bad weather was forecast for the Black Rock City area, which is about 122 miles from Reno.

“There is more rain forecast for the next few days, which could cause further delays and disruptions for participants attempting to leave the Festival as well as other operations within the Festival,” Allen previously said.

The sheriff said additional resources had been collected from around Northern Nevada to “assist with providing people with medical needs on the Playa until people can do it on their own.”

— ABC News’ Marilyn Heck contributed to this story.

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(ROSENBERG, Texas) — Nearly two dozen people were injured after a vehicle crashed into a Denny’s restaurant in Texas, police said.

The vehicle plowed through the building’s wall late Monday morning, according to the Rosenberg Police Department. Police said they received multiple 911 calls about the incident at approximately 11:22 a.m.

A photo released by the police department showed the vehicle fully inside the restaurant surrounded by debris.

Twenty-three people inside the restaurant suffered injuries ranging from minor to serious, police said. All were transported to local hospitals with what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.

The driver was not hurt, police said.

“The investigation into the cause of the accident is ongoing at this time,” the Rosenberg Police Department said in a statement.

The Denny’s is located along a Southwest Freeway frontage road in Rosenberg, a city about 35 miles southwest of Houston.

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(NEW YORK) — The last holiday weekend of the summer is bringing scorching temperatures to a large portion of the U.S.

Seven states — from Texas to Minnesota to New Jersey — are under heat alerts Monday.

Regions from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes and the Northeast will experience record heat for the next several days.

Overall, at least 48 locations/cities could get close to record highs on Monday.

The Northeast is seeing its first true heat wave of the year, with high temperatures in the 90s through Thursday. This will be a significant change for metropolitan areas like New York City, which has only reached the 90s three days this year, none of which have occurred in the past month.

Washington, D.C., is expected to reach near-record temperatures in the coming days and could reach up to 100 degrees on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That comes after Washington-Dulles Airport on Sunday tied an all-time hottest temperature for September at 99 degrees.

Other cities, like Detroit; Chicago; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; Richmond, Virginia; and Lubbock, Texas, will likely reach near record-breaking high temperatures over the coming days.

Among Sunday’s record highs, Duluth, Minnesota, saw its hottest September temperature on record at 97 degrees.

More than two dozen locations across America saw their hottest summer on record in 2023, according to records for June, July and August.

Record hot summers were recorded in major cities like Miami, New Orleans, Houston and Phoenix, which also experienced its driest summer on record, with just 0.12 inches of rainfall.

The states with the most cities recording their hottest-ever summer are Texas, at nine; Florida, with five; Louisiana, with four; and Alaska, at three. Mobile, Alabama, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, also saw their hottest-ever summers.

Major cities recording one of their top five hottest summers included Dallas; Austin, Texas; Tampa, Florida; Seattle; Minneapolis; Tucson, Arizona; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As the U.S. experiences extreme temperatures on land, warm ocean waters are helping to breed storms in the tropics.

A tropical system is currently developing from a wave of energy moving off Africa, which could create a storm moving through near the northern Caribbean islands by the weekend. After that, models are not in agreement if the system goes out to sea or possibly brings some impacts to the East Coast.

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(NEW YORK) — Burning Man attendees are expected to begin leaving the festival on Monday after a downpour and massive flooding left them stranded over the weekend.

The festival, held in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada, garnered more than 70,000 people last year, and just as many were expected this year. Burning Man began on Aug. 28 and was scheduled to run through Sept. 4.

One person died at the festival amid the unusual weather conditions, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Sunday morning in a statement. The death is under investigation.

“The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating a death which occurred during this rain event. The family has been notified and the death is under investigation. As this death is still under investigation, there is no further information available at this time,” according to the sheriff’s office statement.

Organizers are expected to open the gate at the venue so attendees can begin to depart on Monday morning. They are, however, recommending that people delay their departures to avoid getting stuck in the mud.

What happened?

Black Rock Desert was faced with two to three months worth of rain in just a matter of hours on Friday, Sept. 1.

On average, the area gets only 0.2 inches of rain or less in September — but festivalgoers were met with up to 1 inch in some areas, in a desert that gets only about 5 to 6 inches of rain per year.

This is typically the driest time of the year for the desert, and it does not take much rain to make the desert floor a mud bath.

The downpour was followed by cooler temperatures and cloudy skies — extending the drying out process.

However, better conditions on Monday are expected to bring “a welcome chance to dry out,” event organizers said.

What did festivalgoers face?

In response to the unusual weather, event organizers shut down traffic in or out of what is called Black Rock City — where the festival is held in the desert — including the local airport.

Photos show festival grounds covered in muddy puddles, with some attendees braving the messy conditions.

DJ Diplo claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he and Chris Rock walked 5 miles in the mud before a fan picked them up.

Attendees were asked to shelter in place, conserve food and water and avoid driving or operating any vehicle on the campgrounds.

Attendees were advised not to operate any generators or other electrical instruments standing in water.

On Sunday, an afternoon drizzle compounded onto already poor conditions at the campgrounds. The main gate road was still impassable on Sunday night, and alternative exit routes have been planned for the expected exodus of attendees from festival grounds on Monday.

As some attendees prepare to leave on foot, shuttle buses are running to assist in the exit. It is unclear when roads might be dry enough for RVs and vehicles to navigate the roads safely, according to organizers.

Updates are being housed on the “2023 Wet Playa Survival Guide” created by event organizers.

“Burning Man is a community of people who are prepared to support one another,” the guide read. “We have come here knowing this is a place where we bring everything we need to survive. It is because of this that we are all well-prepared for a weather event like this.”

Organizers said they worked with “agency collaborators on the local, county, state, tribal, and federal levels” to prepare and coordinate response to the weather conditions.

On Sunday, mobile cell trailers to boost cell service and charging stations were placed around the festival grounds amid the recovery efforts, according to organizers.

Burning Man has been hosted for over 30 years, according to a statement from the organizers.

In 2013, according to a blog post in the “Burning Man Journal,” a rainstorm similarly rolled in, unexpectedly “trapping 160 people on the playa overnight.”

On Sunday, President Joe Biden said he was in contact with locals and that the government “ought to be getting everybody out of there.”

“We’re in contact with the local people,” Biden told reporters.

The White House recommended that event attendees “listen to state and local officials, and event organizers.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The last holiday weekend of the summer will bring scorching temperatures to a large portion of the U.S.

Regions from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes and the Northeast will experience record heat starting Sunday and will last for the next several days.

The Northeast will see its first true heat wave of the year, with high temperatures in the 90s from Sunday through Thursday. This will be a significant change for metropolitan areas like New York City, which has only experienced stretches in the 90s for three consecutive days this year, none of which have occurred in the past month.

Washington, D.C., is expected to reach near-record temperatures in the coming days and could reach up to 100 degrees on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The highest temperature the nation’s capital has experienced so far this year is 97 degrees.

Other cities like Detroit; Chicago; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; Richmond, Virginia; and Lubbock, Texas, will likely reach near record-breaking high temperatures over the coming days.

More than two dozen locations across America saw their hottest summer on record in 2023, according to records for June, July and August.

Record hot summers were recorded in major cities from like from Miami, New Orleans, Houston and Phoenix, which also experienced its driest summer on record, with just .12 inches of rainfall.

The states with the most cities recording their hottest-ever summer are Texas, at nine; Florida, with five; Louisiana, with four; and Alaska, at three, Mobile, Alabama; and San Juan, Puerto Rico also saw their hottest-ever summers.

Major cities recording one of their top five hottest summers included Dallas, Austin, Texas, Tampa, Seattle, Minneapolis, Tucson, Arizona; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As the U.S. experiences extreme temperatures on land, warm ocean waters are helping to breed storms in the tropics.

A tropical system is currently developing from a wave of energy moving off Africa, which could create a storm moving through the Caribbean by next weekend.

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(NEW YORK) — A 12-year-old boy was shot on Friday night across the street from a Baltimore high school where a football game was being played, police said.

Officers patrolling near the scene heard a gun shot in the area near Dunbar High School and found the boy suffering from a gunshot wound, according to Baltimore police. The boy’s injuries were not life-threatening, they said.

Medics arrived to the scene and transported the victim to an area hospital and he is currently in stable condition, police said.

The incident did not occur on school property, according to police.

Central District detectives responded to the scene and took control of the investigation, according to police.

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(NEW YORK) — Convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante, 34, was spotted in Pocopson Township, about 1.5 miles away from the Pennsylvania prison where he escaped from on Thursday.

Cavalcante was captured on a residential surveillance camera at around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Chester County District Attorney. He was wearing pants, a light-colored t-shirt and white sneakers. He has long, back curly hair and was wearing a backpack.

Cavalcante was convicted of first-degree murder on Aug. 16 for fatally stabbing his 33-year-old former girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole last week.

He was set to be transferred to a state correctional institution in four weeks before he escaped, according to Chester County District Attorney Deb Ryan.

Police said they received a report of an attempted burglary in Pocopson Township at around 11:30 p.m.

Hundreds of law enforcement personnel, including U.S. Marshals, SWAT, local, state and other federal agencies are currently searching the surrounding area.

Cavalcante is from Brazil. Officials said he is 5 feet tall and weighs 120 pounds and has shaggy black hair and brown eyes.

“Law enforcement is requesting that residents in the area remain indoors at this time. Lock your vehicles. Review your surveillance cameras and contact police if you observe anything suspicious. Danelo Cavalcante is considered an extremely dangerous man. Please remain vigilant in assisting with this search. If you see this individual do not approach him. Call 911 immediately,” Ryan said.

The authorities are offering a combined reward of up to $10,000 for Cavalcante.

Cavalcante is also wanted in Brazil for homicide.

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(NEW YORK) — The emergence of Google’s Chromebook as a centerpiece of classroom education nationwide is exemplified by the excuses students have offered for incomplete work, technology repair shop owner Justin Millman said.

“The new version of ‘my dog ate my homework’ is ‘my Chromebook won’t turn on,'” Millman, who says his Westbury, New York-based shop Cell Mechanic serves roughly 150 schools and repairs 5,000 Chromebooks per month, told ABC News.

The durability of Chromebooks is an issue hardly limited to student concoctions, though. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the wide adoption of Chromebooks in schools across the U.S., since the relative affordability and effectiveness of the products eased the shift toward digital learning.

While many classrooms have come to depend on Chromebooks, the products have shown a tendency to malfunction or fail within a handful of years for reasons unrelated to user treatment, critics told ABC News. On top of that, the Chromebooks are difficult to repair, generating harmful waste, imposing significant replacement costs and disrupting student learning, they added.

“If schools don’t have excess Chromebooks that they can hand to someone,” Millman began, “then those kids effectively can’t learn the same way the rest of the classroom can.”

In an interview with ABC News, Forrest Smith, a product manager who works on Google’s ChromeOS team, said Chromebooks offer schools an unparalleled low-cost combination of user-friendliness, speed and security.

Chromebooks require security updates every four weeks, he added, but over time some of the components become incapable of such updates, rendering the product unusable.

“It always starts with speed, simplicity and security for us,” Smith said. “When all of those components inside the device can’t all be updated, we reach a point where that value proposition just can’t be maintained.”

As many school districts shifted to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s elementary and secondary education systems underwent wide adoption of the one-to-one learning model, in which each student receives an assigned technological device, Stacey Weinberg, the director of technology and innovation for the East Williston School District in Long Island, New York, told ABC News.

By March 2021, 90% of educators said there was at least one device for every middle and high schooler; 84% of educators said the same for elementary schoolers, a survey from the EdWeek Research Center found.

“The Chromebook was a perfect solution,” Weinberg said, noting the product’s relative affordability and capacity for internet use.

Over time, however, Weinberg noticed that the products lacked durability, for instance, the inability to receive security updates, she said.

“We’ve definitely run into devices that are no longer taking critical security updates, which poses a deep concern,” Weinberg said.

The U.S. generates 6.9 million tons of electronic waste each year, according to a report by the nonprofit United States Public Interest Research Group, or U.S. PIRG, in April.

“The environmental impact is pretty severe,” Lucas Gutterman, the author of a separate report on the issue released by PIRG in April, told ABC News. “The reality is that at the rate that we are consuming technology, we cannot recycle our way out of the problem.”

Smith, of Google, said the company is committed to environmental sustainability.

“There are large teams of people who are doing everything they can in how we consume energy and how we manage waste; and also in how we produce our own products to make things more sustainable and drive progress,” Smith said.

The need to replace Chromebooks also brings significant costs, Gutterman said. Doubling the life of Chromebooks could save U.S. schools $1.8 billion, assuming no additional maintenance costs, the U.S. PIRG report said. The calculation of total cost savings uses the current price of Chromebooks to determine school expenses under a scenario in which the products last twice as long, the report says.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the U.S. PIRG report.

In May, Google spokesperson Peter Du told The Verge in a statement: “We’ve worked diligently with our hardware partners to increase the years of guaranteed support Chromebooks receive, and since 2020, we now provide eight years of automatic updates, up from five years in 2016.”

“We also are always working with our device manufacturing partners to increasingly build devices across segments with post-consumer recycled and certified materials that are more repairable, and over time use manufacturing processes that reduce emissions,” the statement added.

In June, U.S. PIRG sent a letter to John Solomon, the vice president and general manager of ChromeOS at Google, urging the company to extend the life of 13 Chromebook models.

Google responded to the letter but has not committed to making changes, Gutterman said. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its response to the letter.

“We’re still talking to them,” Gutterman added. “​​Google really is in this unique position because they are providing laptops to millions of students across our country.”

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(LOS ANGELES) — The Department of Justice is seeking damages for one of the largest wildfires that’s ever burned in Los Angeles County.

In a complaint filed on Friday, federal prosecutors allege the Bobcat Fire, which burned over 114,500 acres in 2020, was caused by the negligence of utility company Southern California Edison and its tree maintenance contractor, Utility Tree Service.

The lawsuit alleges the two companies failed to properly maintain trees that came into contact with powerlines.

Forest Service investigators determined the Bobcat Fire ignited on Sept. 6, 2020, within the Angeles National Forest when a tree came in contact with a power line owned by Southern California Edison and maintained by both the utility company and Utility Tree Service, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges the two companies knew of the danger posed by the tree but “failed to take any action.”

A Southern California Edison spokesperson said the company is reviewing the DOJ’s legal action “and it would not be appropriate to discuss outside of the court process.”

“Our thoughts remain with the people who were affected by the Bobcat Fire, who lost homes, vehicles and were evacuated,” the spokesperson, Gabriela Ornelas, told ABC News.

ABC News has reached out to Utility Tree Service for comment.

The lawsuit claims the U.S. Forest Service spent more than $56 million to put out the Bobcat Fire and that the blaze incurred more than $65 million in property and natural resource damages. More than 99,000 acres within the Angeles National Forest burned, while 171 buildings and 178 vehicles were destroyed, among other damages, according to the lawsuit.

“The public has been prevented from recreating on the more than 100 miles of popular system trails and in numerous campgrounds within the burn area in the nearly three years following the fire,” the complaint states. “The fire effects have been, and will be, detrimental to habitats and wildlife, including the federally endangered wildlife-mountain yellowlegged frog and other federally threatened fish and birds. The fire also damaged and destroyed irreplaceable cultural and heritage resources.”

In July, Southern California Edison, Utility Tree Service and Frontier Communications Holdings paid the U.S. $22 million to resolve claims associated with a 2016 wildfire in the Los Padres National Forest, the Justice Department said.

That fire ignited when a tree fell onto powerlines and communication lines owned, respectively, by Southern California Edison and Frontier, the DOJ said.

All three companies agreed to pay the settlement without admitting wrongdoing or fault.

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(NEW YORK) — A Maryland man faces murder charges in connection with the disappearance of a beloved teacher who was abducted while out on a walk, police announced on Friday.

Mariame Sylla, 59, a teacher at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School in the Prince George’s County school district, was reported missing by a family friend in late July, police said.

She went out for an evening stroll in Greenbelt on July 29 “and did not return,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz told reporters during a press briefing on Friday.

On Aug. 1, a “concerned citizen” contacted the Prince George’s County Police Department to report possible human remains found outside in Clinton, “where a dismembered body was discovered,” Aziz said.

DNA testing recently confirmed the remains to be those of Sylla, police said.

The investigation led police to identify 33-year-old Harold Francis Landon III of University Park as a suspect in her murder, police said. Landon was allegedly in the park when Sylla was abducted and later identified through his vehicle, the police chief said.

Homicide detectives filed first-degree murder charges against him on Friday for the murder of Sylla, the police department said. He was scheduled to have his first appearance on Friday and a bond review possibly on Tuesday, police said.

It is unclear if Landon has an attorney who can speak on his behalf. He has been in the custody of the Department of Corrections since Aug. 1 on an unrelated assault charge, police said.

The suspect and victim do not appear to have known each other, according to Aziz, who said detectives have not yet found any connection.

A motive remains under investigation, the chief said.

“I just think we have a person who decided to go out and commit a horrific crime,” Aziz said.

An autopsy is being conducted to determine Sylla’s cause of death, police said. Investigators are also working to determine where and when she was murdered. Her remains were discovered about 18 miles south of her last known location.

Sylla’s disappearance prompted community searches and prayer vigils in the weeks since she was reported missing.

“To all of the young people who love Miss Sylla, who we’ve heard from over the last few weeks, the second-grade students that she taught … we express our condolences and grief to them,” Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said at Friday’s briefing. “To have a beloved member of our community taken away from us in this way is just so devastating.”

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