Search extends into the night for Pennsylvania woman who may have fallen into sinkhole
apnews.com
A grandmother looking for her lost cat apparently fell into a new sinkhole above an abandoned western Pennsylvania coal mine and rescuers worked late into the night to try and find her.

Summary

Authorities in Marguerite, Pennsylvania, are searching for Elizabeth Pollard, 64, who disappeared while looking for her cat. A nearby sinkhole, likely caused by abandoned coal mine subsidence, is the focus of the search.

Pollard’s car was found with her 5-year-old granddaughter unharmed inside.

A shoe was discovered 30 feet down the sinkhole, but no other signs of Pollard have been detected.

Crews are cautiously excavating unstable ground and exploring mine voids. The Pennsylvania DEP will investigate the sinkhole’s cause after the search concludes.

  • Atropos@lemmy.world
    59·
    23 days ago

    Jesus, imagine being a 64 year old lady, and suddenly you’re falling more than 30 feet into a dark hole in the ground. Terrifying.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
      47·
      23 days ago

      Pennsylvania overdeveloped tons of residential and rural land on top of limestone and dolomite deposits. For a hundred years, we’ve been clearing and paving and tilling land, creating groundwater aquifers that slowly erode the subterranean minerals, leaving invisible death traps all over the state. Local building codes have overcorrected with extremely restrictive stormwater management requirements that make it expensive to develop new land (not that this is a bad thing).

      • WxFisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        23 days ago

        In this case it seems to be abandoned mine subsidence which at least in SWPA (where this happened, outside of Latrobe in Westmoreland county) is a huge issue. We had to do a search when we bought our house to see if there were known abandoned mines on our property which would have required we bought subsidence Insurance from DEP.

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
        6·
        22 days ago

        I live in swpa and it’s the norm to assume every house has mine shafts under it. Some are obviously worse than others, but the mines are so extensive that you could dig anywhere and probably find one

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
      7·
      23 days ago

      I don’t even feel like imagining being a middle aged dude and having that happen.

    • Granbo's Holy Hotrod@lemmy.world
      26·
      23 days ago

      The exploitation happened a generation ago, then they just put houses and commerce right on top. Pittsburgh was WILD. Just watched a video on the slag pours over the hillside and how teenagers would use it as a date show. Or how kids would play in soot covered snow, and now there is a Parkinson epidemic in those neighborhoods as these kids got old. We really had 0 respect for the land and our health.

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
        5·
        22 days ago

        Lived in a town with an insanely high cancer rate and it was assumed to be because fumes from the mines under the whole town seeped up through the ground. There were also piles of slag just scattered around and nobody cared to clean it up… I was constantly deathly sick while living there. So glad I left

    • halyk.the.red@lemmy.ml
      9·
      23 days ago

      Pretty sure they can occur naturally, they happen in Florida a lot. I was reading an article about a guy who had a sinkhole open up under his house over night, he woke up dead the next day.

    • xmunk
      31·
      23 days ago

      Fracking, drilling, and coal mining certainly exacerbate the already geologically unstable terrain of Pennsylvania.

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      22·
      23 days ago

      Uh… Nothing? She’s very likely dead if she fell in and was covered

      • Mouselemming
        11·
        23 days ago

        They’re still treating this as a rescue situation, because these sinkholes can have large air pockets and are warmer than the surface air.

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
        4·
        22 days ago

        It’s been below 32 degrees the whole time she’s been missing. I live relatively close to that area. There’s no way she’s stayed warm enough if she’s truly in that sinkhole.

        • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
          1·
          22 days ago

          You can’t really base anything off of surface temp though as underground typically remains more temperate.

          • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
            2·
            22 days ago

            People can die of exposure in like 50 degree weather. I feel like the inside of a sinkhole in winter isn’t a balmy room temp. I hope I’m wrong, though.