By Timothy Karoff
SFGate
SAN FRANCISCO — Of the 70,000 people attending Burning Man in 2024, about 2,600 are paying for a membership to an exclusive club — one that deals not in status or access, but in medical benefits.
Like any city, Black Rock City has its share of accidents, injuries and even deaths. Although the festival is host to several camps of nursing professionals who gift medical services to other Burners, some ailments can only be treated between a hospital’s walls.
Burning Man works with a designated medevac provider, Care Flight, to airlift attendees off of the playa when they require urgent medical care. When a Burner sustains a serious injury or suffers from unexpected heart issues, a helicopter flies them to a Reno hospital. Care Flight Director of Operations Vanessa Coyle told SFGATE that she expects that the service will conduct between 30 and 40 medical transports this year.
Air ambulance rides can be expensive, even with health insurance. As a precaution, about 3.7% of Burners have shelled out $20 for a temporary membership to Care Flight, a service publicized on the Burning Man Project’s website. Depending on their personal health insurance coverage, that membership could cover the entire insurance co-pay for a medically necessary helicopter flight. If insurance deems that a flight was not medically necessary, or if a member is uninsured, then it covers 30% of the cost — still significant, considering that air ambulance trips can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Emergencies requiring airlifts are “pretty variable,” Coyle told SFGATE. “We can have medical patients with cardiac issues or neurological issues, or we might have trauma patients or burn patients.”
Coyle told SFGATE that when Care Flight gets a call, a helicopter stationed in the nearby community of Gerlach, Nevada, flies to the playa’s designated medevac landing zone, near the Burning Man airport. From there, patients are flown to a hospital, typically in Reno, although burn patients go to UC Davis. ( Reno doesn’t have a burn center, so UC Davis is the closest option, Coyle said.)
Although the helicopter has a smaller working space than a ground ambulance, it’s staffed with flight paramedics. “We’re basically like a flying ICU,” Coyle said. “We can do all of the things that an emergency room is going to do while flying.”
This is the first year that Care Flight offered a special membership for Burners. (In previous years, Global Medical Response was Burning Man’s primary medical flight provider.) Alexia Jobson, director of public relations for REMSA Health, the Reno-based company that offers Care Flight services, described the membership program as “very successful,” and anticipated offering it again in future years.
Although the membership offers a similar peace of mind as insurance, the service’s terms and conditions document stresses that the membership isn’t technically an insurance policy, but rather a supplement to an individual’s already-existing health care plan. The Burning Man Project’s website notes that the service “may cover some co-pays caused by being flown out of BRC,” but is light on specifics, and Coyle wouldn’t offer an estimate on how much the service actually saves the average customer because it depends largely on the individual’s primary insurance plan.
Still, Coyle said a $20 fee is “absolutely worth it” given the cost of an air ambulance ride.
“That’s not even enough to cover your gasoline to get out to Gerlach,” she said.
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