Buffalo, N.Y (WBEN) - As the emergency services phase has concluded for USS The Sullivans, the maintenance and decontamination phase is in full swing. An update given by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown alongside President of the Buffalo Naval Park, Paul Marzello Thursday alerted to a possible reopening date of the park.
"The Sullivans has been significantly righted," said U.S. Coast Guard Buffalo Sector Commander, Captain Lexia Littlejohn. "Right now the list varies between .1 and about 3 degrees which is a significant difference from before. At worst it was about 20 degrees."
53 holes have been temporarily plugged with wooden plugs and over 585,000 gallons of water has been removed from the ship, the process of dewatering is almost complete as divers continue to monitor the holes, "Dewatering is 95 percent complete. We've removed over 585,000 gallons of water from the vessel in total. About 2,000 gallons of additional oily water mixed was removed from the vessel," said Captain Littlejohn.
President and CEO of the Buffalo Naval Park, Paul Marzello, says that they are on track to potentially have a reopen date Memorial Day weekend, "We are working very hard to try and put a reopening plan together. I know people are asking: when are we going to be able to visit the park again? Tentatively speaking, we're focused in on Memorial Day weekend. On what normally would be a very popular weekend for us, we have several events planned and we also want to make sure that the events that are planned, can carry on."
Max Faery, WBEN
Artifacts that still lay on the ship continue to be recovered. If and when the park chooses to reopen, the interior of the ship will remain closed as there is still work needing to be done. This means that the deck of the ship will only be available to the public. It is estimated the interior work will be completed in two weeks all the way up to two months.
"We suspect it (repairs) will be in the millions of dollars. That's the kind of range we are looking at," said Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. "We are going to look to federal and state government, particularly, federal government for support in addressing the needs of what we've done and what we will do. It is going to be expensive. We are thankful for the commitments that we have received in the federal level and are very hopeful that the federal level of government will assist in the complete recovery effort, our remediation effort and full stabilization of USS The Sullivans."
To listen to the full conference, see the player below:
