Fifteen years after a 12-year-old Stanley Cheung Yun-hang nearly died in a fire, he found himself in grave danger again, caught in Japan's biggest earthquake on record on March 11.
This time, his first thoughts were for his new bride, Rainbow. They were on honeymoon when the quake hit their hotel in Sapporo, Hokkaido prefecture, northern Japan.
'My wife suddenly said she felt like she was in a rocking boat. I immediately sensed that something was wrong and pulled my wife into the bathroom, which I knew to be the safest place in the room,' Cheung (pictured) said.
After the quake, he and his wife went out around town unaware of the scale of the disaster. 'The city was peaceful as usual. It was not until we watched TV that night that we realised how serious it was,' he said.
Cheung suffered severe burns to 60 per cent of his body in the Pat Sin Leng hill fire in 1996, which killed five people. He lost all the fingers of his right hand and was left with impaired vision and hearing on his right side.
Sharing his latest experience in an RTHK radio programme yesterday, Cheung said he and his wife decided to cut short their honeymoon and headed to the airport the next day. After much negotiation, they finally secured two business class seats for more than HK$70,000 to fly home.