SOAK 26 · Ranger Forms

SOAK 2026 is over!

The burn has wrapped — Wed May 20 through Mon May 25, 2026, at Justesen Ranch, Tygh Valley, Oregon. The Ranger Forms instance that ran the event is now read-only. Below are the raw numbers from the week.

Check back next year. In the meantime, head over to precipitationNW for more Burning Man Regional events around the Pacific Northwest.

By the numbers

88 Distinct Rangers signed on
1,146.5 Ranger-hours logged
191 Shift records
71 Incidents filed
14 MUST REPORT incidents
71 Incidents resolved by event-end
38 Khaki / OOH shifts
2,349 Audit-log entries written

The window

First Ranger signed on Wed May 20 at 11:30 AM Pacific. Last Ranger signed off Mon May 25 at 6:51 PM Pacific. 127 hours of operational coverage. Every six-hour shift period across the event had at least one Ranger on duty — no coverage gaps anywhere in the timeline.

Incidents by category

71 incidents filed across 18 categories. The MUST REPORT band (lost child, DV, sexual violence, violence, medical emergency, psychiatric emergency, harassment) totaled 14 — about 1 in 5. A post-event categorization refinement split the previously generic "Other" bucket into Camp Ops, Vehicle / Equipment, Transport, Welfare Check, Flagged Individual, and Animal so the next year's reports start with sharper category lines.

CategoryCountNotes
Camp Ops15Camp infrastructure, placements, production logistics
Vehicle / Equipment8Vehicles, gators, traffic, road blockage
Medical Emergency MUST7
Welfare Check7Soft wellness contacts, overwhelmed participants
Conflict6Interpersonal disputes, mediation
Transport6Courtesy Gator rides, medical transport
(uncategorized)6Mostly Quick Incidents that didn't receive a category during triage
Animal2
Flagged Individual2Heads-up advisories about known bad actors
Harassment MUST2
Theft2
Weather2
DV MUST1
Fire1
Lost Child MUST1
Psychiatric Emergency MUST1
Sexual Violence MUST1
Violence MUST1

The roster

88 distinct callsigns appeared on the active-rangers roster, across six operational roles. Dirt Rangers carried the bulk of patrol hours; Khaki and Lead split the shift-coordination seat across every six-hour window of the event.

RoleShift recordsDistinct callsigns
Dirt Ranger12269
Khaki3819
OOH / Lead97
Kit87
Mentor75
Alpha76

Top operational contributors

Ranked by meaningful audit-log entries — incident updates, report creations, escalations, shift sign-ons/offs, admin edits — excluding the passive login / session-expire noise. These are the callsigns that put the most work into the system itself across the event. App-operator / pre-event admin work isn't counted here — that's a different shape of contribution than running shifts.

#CallsignActions
1Lazareth272
2Paddington130
3Hazelnut103
4Short Bus102
5Bear Toe89
6Peaches83
7Garnet61
8Lens56
9Parzival36
10Kendrid Spirit18
11Tugboat17
12Thespian8
13Heron7
14Cannoli7
15Malarkey5

Plus 19 more callsigns with 1–5 audit-traced actions each. And everyone who showed up in the field — whose work was radio'd in, witnessed, and trusted without leaving an audit-trail.

A note

This was a deliberately small system — single event, single tenant, Pacific time, retired the week after the burn. Most features came from feedback during the run: bug reports filed live by Rangers between shifts, escalations that surfaced workflow gaps, the Command Center sync prototype that grew out of needing offline-tolerant station coverage, and the post-event categorization pass that re-sorted "Other" into six clearer buckets so next year's reports start sharper.

The audit log captures the system's side of the story. The interesting story lives in the heads of the people who ran the shifts — please drop your account in the feedback form above.