arkmark,
Actually... in carrying out those actions, he wasn't doing his job as a public servant.
His "job" would have been to stay in position, or to move in such a manner as to perform the tasks that he had been ordered to do. Instead, he chose to leave his position and attempt to save the life of another in such circumstances as would have been seen by those who witnessed it as to have been an impossible feat of achievement. He took a impossible risk, he was correct in taking that risk, he lived... and he saved a life. He then completed his tasks, as a public servant, as ordered.
The honour was awarded for an unsolicited act of initiative whereby the individual had put the value of the life of another human or humans in danger above any concern for their own life.