Falls Festival: More than 60 people injured in crowd crush at Lorne music festival

Thirteen women and six men were taken to hospital with injuries including, possible spinal injuries; head and facial injuries; leg, rib, hip and pelvic fractures; and cuts and bruises.

State Health Commander Paul Holman said paramedics and first aid providers had helped more than 60 people injured in the crush with patients aged from their late teens to late 20s.

He said 13 women and six men had to be taken to hospital.

"It was quite a chaotic scene and required a major response," he said.

Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen said seven people were taken to the Lorne Community Hospital and 12 to University Hospital in Geelong.

All were in a stable condition on Saturday morning.

Victoria Police said the festival-goers were injured after some crowd members at the front of a throng of people leaving a performance lost their footing just before 10pm.

Organisers said those injured were part of a crowd leaving band DMA's set in the Grand Theatre to watch London Grammar in the Arena at the festival grounds on Victoria's surf coast.

Fairfax Media reporter Emily Woods, who was in Lorne for the event, said volunteers had described the incident as a stampede and said people had been trampled.

Adam Dean, of Ringwood, was in the crowd and told Fairfax Media one of his friends was injured.

"After DMA's there was a huge rush of people coming out and he (a friend) got trampled everyone was pushing people out – it was bad," he said.

His friend was "alright, legs got scratched up massively, reckons he basically got dragged like 10 metres over gravel from everyone trampling him. But he's all good."

Festival-goer Lucy Spry posted on the Falls Facebook site that it began when someone slipped on gravel.

"Someone slipped on the gravel or fell not too sure but it was too step and such a small exit with thousands and thousands of people pushing no crowd control insight then once they went down they didn't get up quick enough so we all started piling on top of them as the crowd just did not stop pushing but they couldn't see what was going on or here us all absolutely screaming to stop pushing so it ended up in hundreds of kids getting absolutely crushed!"

The organisers said they would wait until Saturday morning to confirm the extent of injuries and the number of people sent to hospital, however they stressed that nobody was critically injured.

The crush happened on the slopes of the festival area.

"Lying in a hospital bed missing Alison Wonderland. Cheers," wrote Olivia Jones.

Ms Jones sent a note to Fairfax declining to comment, however she did say "the paramedics and Lorne hospital have been amazing and a big massive thank you to the festival-goers who were helping pulling people out and carrying injured people."

Jane Mitchell from Hindmarsh in South Australia, writing on Facebook as 'Lpu Jani', said: "My daughter pulled a young person from the crush who was unconscious and had stopped breathing and didn't get ambulance crew or medic response for five minutes. Shoes were torn off, phones crushed and bones broken let's be serious this is a traumatic event for the patrons. Security were not on hand and the patrons screamed for their lives!!!"

Speaking to Fairfax Media in the early hours of Saturday morning, Ms Mitchell said her daughter Ebony, 20, had called in tears, reporting that many had been trampled.

"It was horrific getting a call from your daughter saying she'd been trampled," Ms Mitchell said.

Her daughter reported to her "shoes torn off with laces piles on the ground" as well as broken bones.

While all performances were cancelled in the Grand Theatre tent for the rest of the evening, bands played on at the festival's main stage. Organisers said normal programming would resume on Saturday.

Phone reception at the Lorne festival site is poor – concerned friends and relatives can find out if anyone they know is injured by emailing patroninfo@fallsfestival.com

Mr Holman said Ambulance Victoria had a good presence on site and had worked closely with first aid providers and local hospital to coordinate treatment and transportation of those hurt.

"While the injuries are significant, this could have been quite a tragedy and we are grateful that the outcome was not worse," he said.

This is the 24th annual Falls Festival, and the 23rd held at a farm in Erskine Falls in the hills above the Victorian seaside town of Lorne.

Last year, the festival relocated to Geelong after an out-of-control bushfire in the area burned through the towns of Wye River and Skenes Creek.

Festival programming for sites interstate at Marion Bay, Tasmania and Byron Bay, New South Wales, remains unaffected.

The crowd problem at Lorne is the second serious incident reported at an Australian music festival inside a week.

A young woman died after she was hit by a falling tree branch at the Lost Paradise music festival on the NSW Central Coast on Wednesday.

The story Falls Festival: More than 60 people injured in crowd crush at Lorne music festival first appeared on The Age.