One of the punters who was seriously injured in the horrific crowd stampede during DMA’s set at Falls Festival‘s Lorne leg last week has spoken out about his ordeal, saying he thought he was legit going to die.
29-year-old Tim Hunt was one of nineteen festival attendees to be hospitalised with serious injuries following the crowd crush, with others suffering broken bones, spinal and head injuries (another 60 more were treated for minor injuries by paramedics on site).
Speaking with The Guardian, the South Australian punter says he’d been up near the front of the crowd leaving through the exit that faced the festival’s main stage, when a steady surge swept him up like a rip tide.
“I don’t think anyone at that point had realised – no one knew what was going on, it just felt like it was a bit pushy,” Hunt explained.
“No one really realised how serious it was going to be, sort of, ‘Oh yeah, whatever, we’ll get over it in a sec.’ But because the front had fallen and just the immense force of people were still walking out, not really knowing what was happening, there was just no room to move, so it was sort of like dominos. Everyone has just fallen.”
Then shit got real, and blind panic set in.
“Everyone realised they couldn’t breathe, people started screaming, and there was people on top of me apologising and still yelling at the same time,” Hunt continued. “They could see how much people on the bottom were copping it as well. That’s when everyone started struggling and trying to get out and we were just sort of slowly sliding down like an avalanche, down there.
“You were just trying to breathe, because you couldn’t breathe. People were pushing up, and then you could hear bones snapping from pressure on funny angles on arms and things from people trying to get on there.”
And Hunt honestly thought he was going to die.
“You stopped struggling,” he recalled. “A lot of people did. It’s just sort of, ‘Oh well, this is it.’ You didn’t think you were going to come out of it.”
Hunt ended up getting pushed flat on the ground on a patch of gravel, which he says acted “like a cheese grater”, ripping through his muscles and exposing bone.
Luckily, he survived, but is now in a wheelchair waiting to undergo surgical skin grafts.
Image Via The Guardian
Other punter who were involved in the traumatic incident have also shared their accounts to Music Feeds, describing the scene as looking like “a war zone” with”blood everywhere”.
Falls organisers say they’re “devastated” and “shattered” in an official statement apologising for the incident.
Meanwhile, WorkSafe has opened an investigation into the crowd crush, with festival organisers vowing to conduct their own independent investigation.
Elsewhere, a law firm has spoken to multiple people caught up in the crush and is weighing up the potential for a class action lawsuit against Falls.
We’ll bring you more news as it develops.
Meanwhile, catch exclusive footage of the crowd crush incident below.
Warning: Some Viewers May Find This Footage Distressing
Watch: Exclusive Video Of “Shocking” Falls Festival Stampede
[mfvideo yt=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkqStTvQOYM sb=1678667]
