"The air was crushed out of my lungs." Inside the Falls Festival stampede.

“People just started piling on top of me. I was still moving until it wasn’t possible for me to move myself. I don’t know how many people were on top of me but I was at the very bottom.”

That was the experience of Maddy, a 22-year-old woman caught up in a horrific crush at Falls Festival in Lorne, Victoria, last month.

Maddy was one of 19 people hospitalised following the December 30 stampede, which has lead to numerous investigations (including one by Work Cover Victoria) and a potential class-action law suit against the festival organisers.

The incident occurred as concertgoers attempted to exit The Grand Theatre tent on their way to see another act.

Maddy told Triple J news program Hack she was dragged along the ground after tripping over women who had already fallen.

“I was screaming until I couldn’t anymore because the air was crushed out of my lungs,” she said.

“I remember telling myself, ‘go up for air, go up for air’, but I couldn’t move at all. It wasn’t painful being crushed, it was more painful not being able to breathe.

“I couldn’t move any limbs and my head was to the side facing down. There were legs next to me and I remember biting someone to try and get them to pull me up."

"I just remember going, ‘this is it, this is death. This is you dying.’ And then I blacked out."

Maddy was left with black eyes, a broken sacrum (a bone in the pelvis) and will require up three months to fully recover.

She's reliant on crutches, unable to work and her mother has been forced to take time off to care for her.

“I feel hopeless and useless. I have to ask my mum for everything, and I hate it - I want to be able to do it myself," she told Hack.

“It’s pissing me off.”

While Maddy is reportedly yet to be offered compensation, she says festival organisers have been in early talks with her parents about contributing to medical costs and refunding her ticket.

At this stage, she's undecided about whether to join the class action suit.

“I still don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t want to blame one thing, one person. Because then you could be blaming the people that pushed me, or the [band] DMAs for being so popular," she told Hack.

“But [the festival] does have duty of care. At the end of the day they do have a responsibility.”

Falls Festival has apologised for the incident.