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Arrival Stop: Wacken Open Air Impaired By Rainfall
Unrelenting rainfall has forced organizers of Wacken Open Air in Germany to halt all travel to the festival site, where the world’s most famous metal gathering kicks off tomorrow, Aug. 2.
During the afternoon of Aug. 1, organizers had already informed festivalgoers and media, that due to the persistently difficult weather conditions with rainfall of up to 40 liters per square meter in the past 24 hours and the resulting condition of the camping areas, event areas, as well as the access road, caused massive delays in accessing the festival and camping grounds.
Even then, they had passed on the local meteorologists’ assessment of more rains and thunderstorms. A few hours later, they were forced to outright call for a stop of all travel to Wacken.
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At the time of writing, organizers were in the middle of towing individual vehicles onto the designated parking space, utilizing all available local tractors and their operators, who are working day and night to get festivalgoers on site.
A sold-out 32nd Wacken Open Air expected some 85,000 metalheads on site this year. It became clear during today, that the campgrounds wouldn’t be able to host all incoming visitors this year.
The team had no choice but to request, that “all metalheads in motor vehicles of all kinds cancel their journey to Wacken or not to start at all. We can only try to accommodate vehicles that are already in the immediate vicinity of the festival grounds.”
In a statement released to media, the team regrets this decision, which is was forced to make for the first time in the festival’s 32-year history.