Authorities are concerned that a sinkhole that just formed in a community in western Pennsylvania may have gobbled up a grandma who vanished while searching for her cat.
On Tuesday morning, crews probed the hole in Marguerite with a pole camera equipped with a sensitive listening device, but they were unable to discover anything. What appeared to be a shoe was captured by a second camera that was put into the hole.
Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was reported missing by her family to the police at around 1 a.m. on Tuesday after she went out on Monday night to look for her cat, Pepper.
Around 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh, in Marguerite, police reported finding Pollard’s vehicle parked close to Monday’s Union Restaurant. Inside the vehicle, Pollard’s 5-year-old granddaughter was discovered unharmed.
Rescuers surmised that the sinkhole was recent because hunters and restaurant employees who were in the region in the hours prior to Pollard’s disappearance had not seen the manhole-sized opening.
In the location, where temperatures overnight fell below freezing, authorities dug using an excavator.
We are fairly certain that we are in the proper location. We’re hopeful that she might still be in a void. John Bachatold Triblive is the chief of the Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Company.
The shoe was around 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface, according to Trooper Steve Limani.
Limani remarked, “It almost feels like it opened up with her standing on top of it.”
According to Limani, Pollard lives in a little community across the street from where her granddaughter and automobile were.
The young girl woke up after falling asleep in the automobile. “Gramma never returned,” Limani remarked. Until two troopers came to her aid, the toddler remained in the vehicle. What happened to Pepper is unclear.
According to the police, sinkholes are prevalent due to subsidence caused by nearby coal mining operations.
After responding to the situation, a team from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection came to the conclusion that the underground vacuum was most likely caused by operations done in the Marguerite Mine, which was last used by the H.C. Frick Coke Company in 1952. In that region, the Pittsburgh coal seam is located roughly 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface.
After the search is concluded, the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will inspect the site to determine whether the sinkhole was actually brought on by mine subsidence, according to Neil Shader, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.
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