This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The promoter of an event set up around the Storm Area 51 internet craze in the remote Nevada desert pulled the plug due to low attendance, but the host of a festival for several thousand people in the tiny town of Rachel said her show would go on.

Area 51 Basecamp organiser Keith Wright said that after drawing just 500 attendees at a Friday event planned for 5,000 at the Alien Research Center souvenir shop in Hiko, he had to pull the plug.

Area 51 raid: people gather near US military base to 'see them aliens' Read more

“We put on a safe event for the people that showed up,” Wright said. “But we had to make the decision today because it costs tens of thousands of dollars to staff each day.

“It was a gamble financially. We lost.”

Several dozen campers still at the site could stay until Sunday, he added.

As the event turned into something of a damp squib, a US military unit apologised for a tweet that used the spectre of a stealth bomber being deployed against any young people who tried to break into the remote desert base in Nevada.

The tweet, posted on Friday on the Twitter account of the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), took aim at UFO fans and curiosity seekers who poured into the Nevada desert this week, after an online campaign to “storm” the US military base long rumoured to house government secrets about extraterrestrial life and spaceships.

Alongside a photo of military men and women standing at attention in uniform in front of a B-2 stealth bomber, it read: “The last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today.”

On Saturday, DVIDS said on Twitter that an employee of its DVIDSHub account posted a tweet that “in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defense. It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake.”

In Rachel, Little A’Le’Inn owner Connie West said she was sad to hear the Hiko festival didn’t succeed. In a voice hoarse from stress and lack of sleep, she said a noon-to-midnight slate of Alienstock event musical entertainment would continue for the several thousand revellers camping on her property and nearby federal land.

“This is the most fabulous time,” West said. “I’m just so grateful that people came. This is their event as much as it is mine.”

Lincoln county sheriff Kerry Lee said it was “pretty calm” early on Saturday in Rachel and Hiko. In Nye county, Sheriff Sharon Wehrly said no one showed up at a main entrance and an auxiliary gate at the once-secret Area 51 US air force facility.

Wehrly revised to 100 each the number of people who appeared at each of those gates early on Friday near Amargosa Valley, a 90-minute drive west of Las Vegas.

Lee, about a two-hour drive north of Las Vegas, said revelers gathered until about 4am at two gates between Hiko and Rachel, and said about 20 people broke from among revelers and “acted like they were going to storm but stopped short”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Law enforcement monitor a gate to Area 51. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Lee and Wright reported one arrest, for disorderly conduct, at the Area 51 Basecamp event.

Earlier, officials reported five arrests, including one man treated for dehydration by festival medics in Rachel.

Lee said a man reported missing on Friday morning after heading Thursday from a festival campground in Hiko toward an Area 51 gate was found safe in the evening.

The mood among the assembled remained mostly harmless. While costumed space aliens were a common and sometimes hilarious sight in events that began on Thursday, no one had reported seeing actual extraterrestrials or UFOs.