What are you supposed to do with warehouses upon warehouses of unneeded donations?
The response to the Slave Lake disaster — in terms of volunteerism and donations — was admirable. That has been said time and time again, most recently by premier Ed Stelmach at an appreciation barbecue in Westlock last week to honour the volunteers.
However, we must not become complacent in light of all the congratulations. There is still work to do. Literally, there is tons of it. Perhaps, there is even too much to expect volunteers to do.
The various storage facilities in Westlock are still full of unsorted clothing donations. A similar situation exists in Edmonton, Athabasca, and in Slave Lake itself. There are so many donations, in fact, that it has become a huge logistical task. What’s in Westlock alone would probably be enough to clothe every man, woman and child in Slave Lake several times over — there is obviously more than is needed.
Calls for more volunteers to help sort the remaining donations have gone, for the most part, unanswered.
So who, then, should step up to the plate and accept responsibility for organizing the donations? Where are they to be stored? It’s not reasonable to expect the people of Slave Lake to pay to warehouse these donations, nor is it reasonable to expect volunteers to put hundreds of hours into sorting them.
The provincial department responsible for emergency response, the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, deals with the immediate threat to lives and property, but isn’t involved in donations.
The Red Cross accepts cash donations so as to be able to quickly direct resources where they’re needed, but doesn’t handle material donations.
Who is left to tackle the logistical nightmare of truckloads upon truckloads of unsorted clothing donations?
There aren’t many organizations with money or manpower to tackle this type of thing, and we can’t expect local organizations like FCSS or different volunteer groups to tackle this issue on their own.
Our provincial government, which has responded admirably to the disaster so far, must step in with a plan to deal with the overwhelming amount of donations. Leaving community organizations and volunteers to deal with the aftermath of their own outpouring of generosity would simply be unacceptable.
