WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) - Krysta Doffing was excited to attend the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada for the first time this year. She had no idea that this burning man would get so much media attention because of the muddy and sometimes dangerous conditions caused by heavy rain.

She says things can sometimes go wrong at festivals like this, and preparation is key to staying safe.

"You've got to kind of plan for it not to happen that way. And what that does is it not only makes you prepared, but then it makes the resources more abundant for everybody in case of situations where you know, you've run out of water or food or whatever," said Doffing.

Starting Friday, torrential rains fell, trapping thousands of festival-goers in the dessert.

Wichita native Jim Hammer was also there.

He's been going to burning man for more than 20 years and said it was hard to get around in the mud and a lot of people got stuck either walking or driving.

It took days for people to finally get out.

He was shocked to find out about rumors that diseases like Zika and Ebola were spreading among the stranded festival-goers.

"That is ridiculous," Hammer said. "No one that we know of got serious about this. No one in my camp had any symptoms of any kind. There were jokes about that online, of course, ebola. So I don't think there were any unusual infections there."

Hammer said despite the chaos, the burning man community was able to look out for each other in the tough conditions.