The search for a grandmother believed to have fallen into a giant sinkhole continued Wednesday as authorities in Pennsylvania came across an unstable section of an abandoned mine beneath the sinkhole.
Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was searching for her cat, Pepper, who went missing on December 2nd in Margaret, Pennsylvania. At the time, she was parked near a local restaurant with her 5-year-old granddaughter in her car.
Margaret is a sparsely populated village that is prone to sinkholes due to past mining activity. Authorities believe Pollard fell into the former Margaret Mine, which was last operated in 1952.
Search intensifies for missing Pennsylvania grandmother suspected of falling into sinkhole (Reuters)
Crews determined parts of the abandoned mine were too unstable to search for Ms Pollard safely, but remained hopeful the 64-year-old grandmother would be found alive.
Missing grandmother appears to have fallen into a sinkhole while searching for her lost kitten, “never coming back”
On Wednesday, Pleasant Unity Fire Chief John Basha said crews arrived at the location where Pollard appeared to have fallen, but found no sign of her.
Basha, the mission’s operations director, said the mud may have caused it to move to another part of the mine.
“We certainly ended up where we wanted her to be, where we thought she would be. We went there,” Basha explained. “I don’t know what happened at that point. Maybe the mud slurry pushed her in one direction. There are a few different seams in that mine, where this happened. There was a mineshaft where everything came together.”
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Circumstances vary, but authorities are hopeful Mr. Pollard is still alive. Even though nighttime temperatures dropped to below freezing earlier this week, authorities said there were still sufficient levels of oxygen in some of the sinkholes.
“Everything about the oxygen levels was perfect,” Basha told KDKA on Tuesday. “No carbon monoxide, no explosive gas, nothing.”
“The atmosphere is perfect at the moment, so there’s still room and there’s still hope that we can get there.”
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This Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Images provided by Pennsylvania State Police show the top of a sinkhole in Margaret Village, Pennsylvania, where rescuers were searching for a missing woman. (Pennsylvania State Police, via Associated Press)
Authorities are actively investigating this incident. Further details are unknown at this time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
