People Who Survived More Than One Disaster

This Indonesian man survived two separate tsunamis. The first was the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 that killed nearly 228,000 people across 14 countries. Fortunately, Bahri was not among the victims. His life slowly returned to normal until 2018, when Bahri was visiting the island city of Palu. This was the location of the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami, which claimed the lives of 4,340 people. Bahri felt the earthquake while showering in his hotel room and quickly made his way up to the fifth floor to avoid the resulting wave. Bahri’s calm under pressure and clever thinking resulted in his survival yet again. Unfortunately, some of his friends were not so lucky. After running to the ground floor, they were swept up by the tsunami. He credits his double survival to God, telling BBC, “This shows that God still loves me.”

Rahmat Saiful Bahri is not the only person to have survived two tsunamis. He shares that distinction with Zahrul Fuadi. Fuadi was another victim of the Boxing Day Tsunami. His house was destroyed by the water, but Fuadi and his family survived by escaping on a motorcycle. As he told ABC, “I was running away from the Aceh tsunami back then and thinking that was the end of the world.” He then moved to Japan and became a doctoral student. Unfortunately, it was here that he was affected by another earthquake and tsunami. In March of 2011, Japan’s Tōhoku region was struck by the most powerful earthquake in the country’s history, resulting in a tsunami that killed nearly 16,000 people. Fortunately, Fuadi and his family were on campus at the time and were spared the deadly waves. However, they were still left without power or water.

The story of Casimir Polemus remains hard to verify, but it has been officially reported in a 2004 publication of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Born in France, Polemus supposedly survived three different shipwrecks in the late 19th century. The first came in July of 1875, when the Jeanne Catherine sank off the city of Brest, France. Tragedy struck again in September 1880 when the Trois Frères met disaster in the Bay of Biscay. Polemus probably should have sworn off ships following a second sinking, but no. Just sixteen months after surviving the wreck of the Trois Frères, Polemus faced disaster yet again when the L'Odéon sank off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. He survived his third and final shipwreck and (we can only assume) never set foot on another ship for the rest of his life. Someone up there must have really liked Mr. Polemus.

If you think Casimir Polemus had it bad, just wait until you hear about this poor man. Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave was a Navy midshipman aboard the HMS Aboukir during the First World War. The armored cruiser was patrolling an area of sea off the Dutch coast and was accompanied by the HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy. Unfortunately, they came across the infamous German U-boat U-9. The submarine torpedoed the Aboukir, sending Wykeham-Musgrave into the water. He successfully swam to the Hogue, but this too was torpedoed soon after his arrival. Alive but weak and tired, Wykeham-Musgrave swam to the Cressy, only for this ship to be struck by a torpedo in kind. Like Rose in “Titanic”, Wykeham-Musgrave floated on a piece of wood in the open ocean before he was rescued by a trawler. In the span of just one hour, all three cruisers sank and approximately 1,450 people were killed, striking a major blow to the Royal Navy’s reputation.

This Swedish couple faced the honeymoon from Hell in 2011. The Svanströms love to travel, and to commemorate their wedding, they embarked on a four-month-long adventure honeymoon spanning multiple countries and continents. They brought their baby daughter Elinor along for the trip. In Indonesia, they experienced a monsoon that ripped the roof off their bus. In Australia they faced a bushfire in Perth, and then a cyclone in Cairns, resulting in their evacuation by the Australian Red Cross. In Japan, the family of three were in Tokyo during the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. They also narrowly missed disaster in Christchurch, New Zealand, as the city was rocked by an earthquake right before their flight there. They were subsequently redirected to Auckland. Luckily, the Svanström family made it through each misfortune unharmed. They certainly experienced adventure, but it probably wasn’t the type they had in mind.

Some people are so unbelievably unlucky that they experience two devastating hurricanes...before they’re even a month old. Little Gabriella Coane was born on August 20, 2017. That same month, Hurricane Harvey rocked Texas and Louisiana, resulting in $125 billion in damage and over 100 deaths. Once Hurricane Harvey moved on from Houston, Gabriella’s parents, Bruce and Jessica, decided to head to their second home in Miami. It was then that they learned about Hurricane Irma. Forming in late August, Irma struck Florida in early September, causing 84 deaths in that state alone. All told, Irma claimed the lives of at least 134 people. The Coanes successfully evacuated Miami and drove to Alabama, where they waited out the devastating storm in a hotel. Young Gabriella was given the nickname Storm owing to her penchant for surviving them.

It turns out, quite a few people have survived multiple shipwrecks. An Irish man named William Clark survived the sinkings of both the Titanic and The Empress of Ireland. George Beauchamp is said to have survived both the Titanic and the Lusitania. But neither of these men can compete with Violet Jessup. Jessup was working as a stewardess on the RMS Olympic when, in 1911, it collided with the HMS Hawke. Luckily, there were no fatalities. But the following year, she worked on the Titanic, escaping on lifeboat 16 as it sank. During the First World War, she worked for the British Red Cross and survived the sinking of the HMHS Britannic, which hit a deep sea mine. She had to leap out of her lifeboat to avoid the ship’s propellers. Despite all this, Jessop returned to work for the White Star Line. She was given the nickname Miss Unsinkable and lived to be 83 years old.

This man has experienced true terror. And statistically speaking, he may just be the unluckiest man in history. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business when the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on the city. The bomb detonated just three kilometers from Yamaguchi’s location, resulting in radiation burns, temporary blindness, and ruptured eardrums. Despite the horrific injuries, Yamaguchi was back at work just three days later in his hometown… of Nagasaki. While Yamaguchi was discussing the Hiroshima bombing with his boss, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on the city. Despite being just three kilometers away from the bomb’s detonation (yes, again), Yamaguchi was uninjured. He was officially recognized by the Japanese government as a survivor of both atomic bombings, and he went on to live a long life, dying in 2010 at 93.