In the bleak winter days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, a town in shock after losing 20 children and six adults faced down intrusive reporters, political opportunists — and an outpouring of stuff. Thousands of boxes of Christmas toys, school supplies, gifts and clothing were sent to Newtown, Connecticut, along with over half a million cards, letters and paper snowflakes. Something like 65,000 teddy bears were mailed there, more than 1,000 of them life-sized.

It was a tremendous gesture of love from people around the world, but the logistical challenges presented by these gifts stretched residents to the breaking point. Newtown is a small, semi-rural town made up of villages, with a total population of just 27,000. With its limited postal resources, many other public employees — EMS, police, firefighters — and volunteers from surrounding post offices had to be brought in to handle all the stuff. At one point, the donations occupied 80,000 square feet of floor space stacked tightly together and standing eight feet high. During a time in which their community was struggling with unbearable grief, residents were forced to worry about what to do with this avalanche of packages, letters and cards.

This situation isn’t unique to Sandy Hook. I worked at UPS transportation logistics for 41 years, and my last 11 years were devoted to humanitarian logistics. (I retired at the end of August 2018.) I was deployed in the wake of several disasters — including the 2016 floods in Louisiana and Hurricanes Harvey, Matthew and Joaquin — and I can give you so many examples about the deluge of unsolicited, and mostly unwanted, donations triggered by catastrophic events.

In my years on the job, I came to think of it as “the disaster within the disaster.” In every case, I saw how this second disaster made it nearly impossible for humanitarian responders to run efficient relief operations. The influx of donations clogged shelters, airport tarmacs and warehouses, and drained the time and energy of the willing but scarce volunteers. And if you’re wondering why relief organizations don’t just give the extra stuff to others that could use it, think about it: In the middle of their own unfolding disaster, they don’t have the labor, facilities or equipment to repackage and re-route the unsolicited stuff.

Read the full article about in-kind donations by Dale Herzog at TED-Ed.