Neither "victim" nor "survivor" feels right to me. Maybe I can come up with something.

From casual reading of people who do pull together pretty good lives after some disaster, it seems as though a lot of them spend a year or two freaking out or collapsing first.

It's possible that part of the problem with the victim/survivor dichotomy is that it doesn't leave space for natural processes of healing-- it's all supposed to be a matter of choice.