Posted on 12/04/2024 4:10:49 PM PST by nickcarraway
A grandmother looking for her lost cat apparently fell into a sinkhole that had recently opened above an abandoned western Pennsylvania coal mine and rescuers worked late into the night Tuesday to try and find her.
Bright lights illuminated snow flurries and various equipment at the site while crews worked above and below ground, video from the scene showed.
Crews lowered a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole in Marguerite on Tuesday morning but it detected nothing. A camera lowered into the hole showed what could be a shoe about 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface, according to Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson, Trooper Steve Limani.
"It almost feels like it opened up with her standing on top of it," Limani said.
The family of Elizabeth Pollard, 64, called police at about 1 a.m. Tuesday to say she had not been seen since going out Monday evening to search for Pepper, her cat.
Police said they found Pollard's car parked near Monday's Union Restaurant in Marguerite, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh. Pollard's 5-year-old granddaughter was found safe inside the car.
The manhole-sized opening had not been seen by hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard's disappearance, leading rescuers to speculate the sinkhole was new.
Authorities used an excavator to dig in the area, where temperatures dropped to below freezing overnight.
"We are pretty confident we are in the right place. We’re hoping there is still a void she could be in," Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Company Chief John Bacha told Triblive.
By late afternoon, searchers were using access to a mine to try to find her and had dug a separate entrance out of concern that the ground around the sinkhole opening was not stable. Authorities vowed to keep searching for Pollard until she is found.
Pollard lives in a small neighborhood across the street from where her car and granddaughter were located, Limani said.
The young girl "nodded off in the car and woke up. Grandma never came back," Limani said. The child stayed in the car until two troopers rescued her. It's not clear what happened to Pepper.
Police said sinkholes are not uncommon because of subsidence from coal mining activity in the area.
A team from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which responded to the scene, concluded the underground void is likely the result of work in the Marguerite Mine, last operated by the H.C. Frick Coke Company in 1952. The Pittsburgh coal seam is about 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface in that area.
Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Neil Shader said the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will examine the scene after the search is over to see if the sinkhole was indeed caused by mine subsidence.
Hope she’s okay.
Doggone cats and their holes.
OMG!!! PRAYERS!
Horribly sad report. The cat’s OK but we can only. pray that the poor woman lives through this.
There’s more to this story...
I’m open minded, what is it?
I too wish for a safe result for the woman but why on earth are there so many holes in the story? It’s impossible to make head or tails to a story when it’s written like this.
**not seen since going out Monday night to look for a cat
(Who hadn’t seen her since she went out to look for the cat?)
**her car was 40 miles away
(Did she live 40 miles away from someone who hadn’t SEEN her since she went out to look for the cat?)
**5 year old granddaughter was in the car
(where did the granddaughter live?)
?????????
Sorry - guess the car was 40 miles from Pittsburgh NOT from where the lady was last seen....have to slow down reading!
My mom said latest is they are saying it is now a recovery instead of rescue.
We live in an area that was all orchards 120 years ago. Wells were common around here and most were not properly filled in. Our neighbors across the street suddenly had a well about 3 feet in diameter open up in their backyard where their little boys often played. The well had been covered with a wood sheet and soil put over the wood cover. It eventually rotted away and there was the gaping well. It wasn’t on any plat maps and wasn’t disclosed in the sale. It cost them a lot of money to properly plug it with concrete. Fortunately, nobody fell into the well.
Reminds me of something I read decades ago in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
A man walking down a street in Scotland singing “When the roll is called up yonder!” when the ground suddenly opened and swallowed him.
Incident supports my cats are evil theory.
Yes, she is unfortunately now dead.
A crew was working on a project when the day began coming to an end. The foreman realized they’d be needing a 4X8 sheet of plywood to cover up a gap in a wall before they could leave. One worker recalled seeing one laying in the field out behind the project. He went to where he had seen it and it still lay there. He bent over and lifted one end, and then stepped forward to raise it straight up. He stepped forward to do this and immediately dropped into a hole in the ground and the sheet of plywood then lay back down and covered the hole. The end.
Cats gotta go one way or the other. Either this or being eaten by a Haitian in Ohio
Way back when I was ~20 y/o, I was jogging on the edge of an asphalt surface county road — the type that gets “oil and chips” every 3 years or so. Suddenly my left foot plunged right through the “solid” pavement! It turned out water had found a pathway by an old culvert and eaten away material under the surface. I assume freeze-thaw cycles contributed. Luckily, the “sinkhole” was not large - maybe 2-1/2 feet deep, and I was pretty agile / somehow did not break my leg - I just had some nasty bruises and scrapes.
A neighbor came by and it turned out he had a white-painted saw-horse we put just ahead of the hole (traffic-wise). Then he called the sheriff and a deputy came out with a better marker, then the country road dept. came out & put up a better barricade & hazard signs. I was thankful the hole was small and not caused by an old mine (which we have some of.)
Anyway, that got me thinking that in this case the lady’s cat might have gone into a hole starting to open up, and she got too close to the edge which then failed, or, she could have walked out on what seemed to be a “perfectly good” surface and plunged right through. :-(
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.