Skip to main news content
Skip to news search
Skip to news navigation
Skip to Channel 4 navigation

29 Oct 2012

America on the edge – Hurricane Sandy in pictures

People all along America’s eastern seaboard are preparing for the onset for the “superstorm” Hurricane Sandy.

Azi is one of the artists exhibiting in a show held by Freedom from Torture. All the artists are torture survivors.

Rape is also by Azi, who was tortured in Iran for her role in the Tehran women’s movement.

Hasan has been in the UK for three years, receiving therapy from Freedom from Torture since 2009.

‘Art isn’t magic, but sometimes it can be quite useful,’ says Hasan, who also painted this picture.

Siad arrived in the UK as a lone minor from Afghanistan in 2002. He says his pictures are a way of making sense of his traumatic journey.

Women Alone, another painting in the Thirty Six Pounds exhibition, is also by Siad, who is yet to be granted refugee status in the UK.

Uvindu, an award-winning journalist and freedom of expression activist in exile from Sri Lanka, finds art a form of therapy in the wake of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war.

Uvindu has painted all his life. He says Freedom from Torture’s Open Art Studio is a ‘soft place to fall’ for torture survivors.

The storm, which could affect tens of millions of people in the eastern third of the US, is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow in parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

A couple kiss goodbye before the last train to Long Island departs Penn Station in New York, 28 October, 2012. (Reuters)

Marine One carrying US President Barack Obama takes off from the south lawn of the White House in Washington as the president departs for a campaign trip to Florida.

New York Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to the 206th Military Police Company prepare to move out. (Reuters)

Only a few bread items remain on the shelves at the Waldbaums grocery store as Hurricane Sandy approaches in Long Beach, New York. (Getty)

A boarded-up store remains open for business as the first signs of Hurricane Sandy approach in Fairfield, Connecticut. (Getty)

A sign on dispay in Grand Central Station in New York. The MTA has been began an orderly shutdown of commuter rail and subway services in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.

New York City police officers go door to door in a housing project to take note of which residents are ignoring the mandatory evacuation order in Queens. (Reuters)

Sandy, which has already claimed over 50 lives in the Caribbean, is predicted to bring heavy winds and floodwaters to the mid-Atlantic region. (Getty)

Obama called on Americans to take Hurricane Sandy

A man carries a case of water down Lexington Avenue in midtown in New York as stores begin to close down in preparation for Hurricane Sandy. (Getty)

A surfer rushes to board one of the final subway trains in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York City will close its bus, subway and commuter rail service Sunday evening. (Reuters)