To be fair, this is what the lodestone said: "Gear you have previously earned can still be obtained from the Calamity Salvager after Patch 5.1."
So... it could have been clearer - but it seems also perfectly reasonable on their side to expect that people know how the Salvager works... or to maybe check if they're able to get the gear back from there before the event ends... I'll admit though that its almost naive to expect the playerbase to be reasonable, pay attention or educate themself about such things beforehand...
