TOWNSHIP UNITY On Wednesday, rescuers looked for a woman who had reportedly fallen into a sinkhole that had recently developed atop an abandoned coal mine in western Pennsylvania while searching for her lost cat.
Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was located by crews in the Unity Township town of Marguerite during the night. Early on Wednesday, a state police spokesperson stated that they were reviewing their strategies to prevent endangering themselves.
Trooper Steve Limani informed media that the integrity of that mine was beginning to be jeopardized.
In order to remove clay and mud from the mine, rescuers had been using water to break it down. However, he said that this effort was creating hazardous circumstances for any future mine subsidence.
He stated that we would most likely need to change our approach and do a somewhat more intricate excavation.
A pole camera equipped with a sensitive listening device was dropped into the hole on Tuesday, but it failed to detect anything. According to Limani, a camera dropped into the hole revealed what appeared to be a shoe some 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.
Limani remarked, “It almost feels like it opened up with her standing on top of it.”
At after one in the morning on Tuesday, Pollard’s family called the police to report that she had not been seen since she went out on Monday night to look for her cat, Pepper.
Axel Hayes, Pollard’s son, stated in an interview with CBS News that he is feeling a range of emotions.
I’m disappointed that she hasn’t been located yet, and my main concern is if she is still down there, where she is, or if she moved and found a safer place, Hayes stated. Right now, all I can hope for is that she’s still here, that she’ll survive, that my niece has a grandmother, and that I have a mother I can talk to.
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.
Temperatures in the area fell below freezing overnight, and authorities dug using an excavator.
We are fairly certain that we are in the proper location. John Bacha, the fire chief for Pleasant Valley, told Triblive, “We’re hoping there’s still a void she could be in.”
Concerned that the ground surrounding the sinkhole opening was unstable, searchers built a new entry and used access to a mine to try to locate her by late Tuesday afternoon. Police promised to continue looking for Pollard until she was located.
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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