Summary
5 November 2012
It's a week since superstorm Sandy hit the US East Coast and the day before the general election around a million people are still without power. Temperatures have been dropping and tens of thousands of people need to find new homes.
Reporter:
Alastair Leithead
Around 1m people in the US are still homeless.
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Report
The clean-up is still going on across New York and New Jersey a week after superstorm Sandy smashed into the East Coast. Hundreds of thousands of people are still without power, tens of thousands will have to find accommodation as their houses are ruined and temperatures are dropping fast.
There's an urgency to the clean-up operation as another storm is forecast to hit the region later in the week. Officials say they hope there'll be the minimum amount of disruption on election day. Polling stations are being moved, generators brought in for the electronic voting machines, but turnout is expected to be lower in places where there's still no power, or people have been driven from their homes.
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Vocabulary
- clean-up
the process of cleaning or tidying something
- smashed
made something loudly break into many pieces
- dropping
falling
- urgency
sense of urgent necessity
- disruption
confusion or disorder
- polling stations
places where you go to vote
- generators
machines which produce electricity
- turnout
the number of people who vote in an election or attend an event
