Rescuers search for woman who may have fallen into a sinkhole while looking for her lost cat
UNITY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Rescuers searched Wednesday for a woman who went looking for her lost cat and apparently fell into it a sinkhole which had recently opened above an abandoned coal mine in western Pennsylvania.
Crews worked all night long in the Unity Township community of Marguerite to find Elizabeth Pollard, 64. A state police spokesman said early Wednesday that they were reassessing their tactics to avoid endangering themselves.
“The integrity of that mine is starting to be compromised,” Trooper Steve Limani told reporters.
Rescuers had used water to break down clay and dirt and remove it from the mine, but that action made conditions dangerous “with the potential for other mine subsidence to occur,” he said.
“We’ll probably have to switch gears” and do a little more complicated investigation, he said.
On Tuesday they lowered a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, but it detected nothing. A camera lowered into the hole showed what could be a shoe about thirty feet below the surface, Limani said.
“It almost feels like it opened with her standing on top of it,” Limani said.
Pollard’s family called police around 1 a.m. Tuesday to say she had not been seen since she went looking for Pepper, her cat, on Monday evening.
In an interview with CBS News, Pollard’s son, Axel Hayes, said he is experiencing a mix of emotions.
“I’m angry that she hasn’t been found yet, and I’m really just concerned about whether she’s still out there, where she is there, or if she’s gone somewhere and found somewhere safer,” Hayes said. “Right now I just hope she’s alive, that she’s going to make it, that my niece still has a grandmother, that I still have a mother I can talk to.”
Police said they found Pollard’s car parked near Monday’s Union Restaurant in Marguerite, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. Pollard’s 5-year-old granddaughter was found safe in 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 that the sinkhole was new.
Authorities used a backhoe to dig into the area, where temperatures dropped below freezing overnight.
“We’re pretty sure we’re in the right place. We hope there is still a void that she could be in,” Pleasant Valley Fire Chief John Bacha Triblive said.
By late Tuesday afternoon, searchers were using a mine entrance to find her and had dug a separate entrance out of concern that the ground around the sinkhole opening was unstable. Authorities vowed to continue searching for Pollard until she is found.
Pollard lives in a small neighborhood across the street from where her car and granddaughter were, Limani said.
The young girl “dozed off in the car and woke up. Grandma never came back,” Limani said. The child remained in the car until two soldiers rescued her. It is not clear what happened to Pepper.
Police say sinkholes are not uncommon due to subsidence caused by mining activities in the area.
A team from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, responding to the scene, concluded that the underground void is likely the result of work at the Marguerite Mine, which was last operated by the HC Frick Coke Company in 1952. Pittsburgh’s coal seam is about six meters high. (6 meters) below the surface in that area.
Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Neil Shader said the state Office of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will investigate the site after the search is over to see if the sinkhole was indeed caused by subsidence of the mine.
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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pa. Kathy McCormack in New Hampshire and Sarah Brumfield in Maryland contributed to this report.