Fashion
Wildfire Victims Need Cash More Than Used Clothes
After natural disasters, relief organizations are overwhelmed by clothing donations. Aid groups in Southern California say money is more helpful.
Relief organizations responding to the wildfires in the Los Angeles area are expecting donations of canned food, bottled water, personal hygiene products, blankets, baby formula, kitchen supplies and other necessities in the coming weeks.
They will also receive clothing. Mountains of it.
As aid workers well know, many Americans are eager to donate their used clothes. In the aftermath of natural disasters, the heartfelt desire to assist people in need seems to meet the opportunity to purge one’s closet.
When Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina last fall, causing floods and destroying or damaging more than 70,000 homes, volunteer workers there were in sore need of electric blankets and propane heaters to distribute as cold weather set in. What they often received, by the car and truck load, was used clothes.
“It became truly overwhelming,” said Valentine Reilly, who lives in Boone, N.C., and co-founded State Line Resource Station, a rural distribution center that was up and running days after the storm. “There’s no way we have the manpower to clean, sort and organize into sizes.”
Some items, like new work boots, were needed. Others became a burden: “We’re talking about five or six semis of used clothes,” Ms. Reilly said.
