One of the doctors caught at the centre of the Boston Marathon terror attack is a Prince George native son.
Dr. Ron Walls is an internationally acclaimed trauma physician, and is currently the chair of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, one of several hospitals to receive the flood of patients after the bombs were set off at the marathon's finish line on Monday.
Attempts by The Citizen to reach Dr. Walls by deadline Tuesday were unsuccessful, but he was quoted extensively in American news outlets.
"For many, many people in emergency medicine who are practicing domestically, and not in the military, these are once-in-a-lifetime events," he told The Boston Globe newspaper, and added "[What] struck me the most [was] the incredible calm of the victims, even though they were obviously experiencing something no human being should ever have to experience...incredibly calm and able to help us take care of them."
Walls was interviewed live on NBC-TV's The Today Show on Tuesday morning. He told host Matt Lauer that his hospital, and other medical services in the Boston area, have extra resources ready for each running of the Boston Marathon.
"We have drilled for this many times...so when we respond to these things it is a pretty quick response," Walls said.
His hospital took in 31 of the victims, none of which needed emergency surgery, and many had injuries "as severe as I've ever seen."
He said the injuries were consistent with ambient shrapnel - the stuff laying around on the street - blown by the force of the bomb blasts. "It wasn't weaponized shrapnel," he clarified on The Today Show.
Walls is a member of the family once synonymous with the city's Ford vehicle dealerships. He attended medical school at UBC and began his career at Denver General Hospital. After stints in Washington, DC and Vancouver he took his current position in Boston. He is also a professor at Harvard Medical School.
Walls has won numerous awards and written books and academic articles in his specialized field of trauma medicine.
