Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - All eyes are on the US Naval ship, USS The Sullivans that started to list drastically Thursday due to an unknown breach in the ship's hull. Over the last couple years, the ship has received funding through fundraising and from the federal budget in efforts to repair the hull.
The project "Save The Sullivans" raised over $1 million dollars last year in efforts to help repair damage to the ship's hull.
An additional $490,000 was approved in federal funding with help of Congressman Brian Higgins to help preserve the landmark.
Now, with the breach and threats of catastrophic damage to the ship, experts are assessing the best mode of reversing the situation and determining the costs to do it.
"The city has been in touch with a number of elected officials at different levels of government who are working with us to look at what financial assistance might be required to fix the ship," said Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. "This is a national landmark, we take our responsibility as caretakers of the ship very seriously so we will work with the park to make sure the ship is repaired."
"We are certainly not going to ask for a dime until we know what the problem is," said CEO and President of the Buffalo and Erie County Buffalo Naval and Military Park, Paul Marzello. "We always have our buffalonavalpark.org website and our savethesullivans.org website and both cases they are taking donations and we have received several already today so I appreciate people who support this cause but I want to reemphasize that we have some work to do first. We are going to do our best to spend the money how you want it to be spent and we will come back when we know more."
"We will be talking our partners in the legislature with regards to assistance," says Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. "I think right now it is not so much dollars and cents that are needed but stabilization of the craft and that's out of the county's hand but I believe we should be able to help out with funding in the long run."
A briefing was held Thursday. To view the full briefing click down in the player below:
