When leading seaman Amrithlall Ramdin’s family heard that he had died, they knew it must have been in the pursuit of saving lives.
“He was a hero,” his sister-in-law, Arusha Ramjissoon, told The Mercury yesterday.
Durban based Ramdin, 41, was one of three navy men killed in a horror accident at the Durban naval base on Friday.
Along with able seaman Francois William Mundell and seaman Henro Ter Borg, he was trying to rescue three contract workers who had become trapped in a sewer pump pit, after a methane gas leak.
Tragically all six - the navy men as well as the workers, identified in The Sunday Tribune as Thokozani Makhoba, Phelelane Zondi and Warren Williams - were overcome by fumes and died.
More than 20 others were treated for gas inhalation.
Ramjissoon had known Ramdin since childhood. He and her sister, Verusha, were high school sweethearts. Ramdin joined the SANDF in 1997, when 21. He was looking for a way to provide a stable life for himself and Verusha.
“He sacrificed everything – left her and his home – to go off and do his training,” Ramjissoon said. “He loved his job and was very dedicated.”
But Ramdin was also a devoted family man. He and Verusha married in 2000 and had two children - a daughter, now 14, and a son, 8.
Ramdin’s family was his life, said his sister-in-law.
“He would do anything for them,” she said. “He spent every moment he could with them”. He was an avid fisherman, and some of his loved ones’ fondest memories of him would be of days spent with him on the beach.
Ramdin’s work, however, took him away from home at times, and Ramjissoon said he was injured while on a mission in Burundi in 2005.
She described her brother-in-law as kind, loving, humble and brave, and said he went out of his way to help others.
“Even when he was not at work, he was the kind of person who was always willing to lend a helping hand.”
The family was devastated, she said.
Ramjissoon said it was especially tragic for the children, who had looked up to their father as a role model.
“It is so sad to think his son won’t get to do all the things a father and son are supposed to do together, and that he won’t be there to walk his daughter down the aisle one day,” she said.
The SANDF released the names of the deceased on Saturday.
Mundell, 26, was from George and Ter Borg, 21, Cape Town. Ter Borg was in Durban for the Armed Forces Day celebrations.
“The Military Police with members of the SAPS are continuing with their investigations to establish the circumstances that led to this painful episode,” the SANDF said.
“The chief of the SA Navy has also convened a board of inquiry to further investigate the matter and bring the families some form of closure.”
As of yesterday, funeral
arrangements had yet to be announced.