Sheriff’s Office Capt. Walter Dornan receives the Kiwanis Club Life-Saver Award for his actions helping motorists trapped after accidents on the iced-over Paris Road Bridge last January

Sheriff’s Office Capt. Walter Dornan will remember last Jan. 24 for spending a freezing night dealing with the slippery, ice-covered Paris Road Bridge in New Orleans and helping the more than 20 motorists – mostly from St. Bernard Parish – who were trapped on it after traffic accidents.

Dornan, a veteran deputy who heads the department’s Traffic Division and lives in Chalmette, was honored Sept. 9 by the Kiwanis Club of St. Bernard with its Life-Saver Award for his actions that night.

The Kiwanis Club gives the award four times a year, twice to a parish sheriff’s deputy and twice to firefighters.

The ceremony included Sheriff James Pohlmann and Maj. Adolph Kreger of the Sheriff’s Office, Dornan’s wife, Brandy, Kiwanis Club President Shirley Pechon and Sam Catalanotto, chairman of the Life-Saver Committee.

In presenting the award, Catalanotto said that more than 10 years ago the Kiwanis Club started it as way to recognize first-responders in the parish for the work they do to protect the public. “They are the first people through a door’’ to rescue someone in an emergency, he said. “They put their lives on the line’’ for St. Bernard.

Dornan thanked the group for the honor, saying, “I enjoy being a policeman’’ and added, “It wasn’t just me out there’’ that night helping people. “It was a joint effort.’’

He had been off-duty the night of Jan. 24 when he heard a call come out about icing and auto wrecks on the south-bound lanes of the Paris Road Bridge, which while in New Orleans also connects St. Bernard to the eastern part of the city.

“I knew it had to be our people from St. Bernard Parish involved,’’ said Dornan, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office since the late 1980s and graduated the FBI National Training Academy in 2010,

He was the first deputy on the scene at the bridge that night and decided immediately to prevent other accidents by shutting down the north-bound lanes, even though the bridge wasn’t in his parish. He parked his vehicle across its two lanes to prevent motorists from going up.

Sheriff James Pohlmann was notified the bridge had been blocked and other deputies were called to the scene.

The sheriff said at the ceremony, “I wasn’t surprised Walter was the first on the scene. He often is.’’ Sheriff Pohlmann also went to the bridge and found Dornan had “made sure the scene was safe. When I left he had it under control.’’

There were more than twenty vehicles piled up in accidents at the top of the bridge on the south-bound lanes heading toward Chalmette.

“We got on the phone with parish government,’’ Dornan said, to get road crews out to sand over areas of the south-bound lanes and Fire Department personnel out so an attempt could be made to reach motorists stuck in their vehicles after being in the wrecks.

Units from New Orleans police weren’t on the scene.

The Fire Department got food and water to people trapped in the vehicles.

“We had people injured up there in accidents,’’ Dornan said. “It was pretty slippery and I was in dress shoes.’’

People going up the bridge to get to those injured had to hold on to the middle area between the north- and south-bound lanes, he said.

“We took our time and walked up the bridge and checked on people. It was a joint effort.’’

Dornan said, “It took hours to get them out,’’ because they couldn’t be brought down until the bridge was sanded.

Even St. Bernard school buses were used to take people home when they got them down, he said.