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.
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.
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).
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.
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
Minecraft rules
I thought people weren’t allowed to live in Centralia anymore?
/s
Superman’s movie made me fear this for as long as I have memory.
I don’t even feel like imagining being a middle aged dude and having that happen.
Knees go ‘pop’?
Honestly sounds terrifying for anyone?
So they found her car but what about the cat!?
“It’s not clear what happened to Pepper.”
So do sink holes just appear out of nowhere or is industrial exploitation destabilizing things?
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.
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
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.
Having woken up dead a few times myself I do not recommend
I remember reading about that in the newspaper when it happened. Absolutely terrifying.
Fracking, drilling, and coal mining certainly exacerbate the already geologically unstable terrain of Pennsylvania.
I hope the cat’s not in there.
Cats gonna show up in a day or two.
Probably/hopefully.
Once it’s hungry enough. Ahem.
They’re afraid? Think what she’s feeling right about now. 😶
Uh… Nothing? She’s very likely dead if she fell in and was covered
They’re still treating this as a rescue situation, because these sinkholes can have large air pockets and are warmer than the surface air.
Mmmm, warm sub-surface air. Good ol’ mummy crotch with just a gasp of worm farts. Timeless.
A lady is probably dead wtf is wrong with you?
My sweet, summer child…
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.
You can’t really base anything off of surface temp though as underground typically remains more temperate.
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.
She’s in a better place.
I’m willing to bet she’d much rather be above ground.
Pennsylvania?
Definitely not a good place to be rn. I live in Pa and it kind of really sucks.
They call it Pittsburgh because at any moment a gaping pit can open beneath you.
Cats knocking things over as usual… SMH My Head 🤦♂️
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/joke
