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Authorities fear a grandmother who disappeared while searching for her cat may have been swallowed by a sinkhole that recently opened in Western Pennsylvania village.
Crews dropped a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole at Marguerite on Tuesday morning, but found nothing. A second camera lowered into the hole showed what might be a shoe.
The family of Elizabeth Pollard, 64, called police about 1 a.m. Tuesday to say she had not been seen since she went out Monday night to look for Pepper, her cat.
Police said they found Pollard’s car parked near Monday’s Union restaurant in Marguerite, about 40 miles (65 km) east of Pittsburgh. Pollard’s five-year-old granddaughter was found safe in the car.
The maintenance hole-sized opening had not been seen by hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard disappeared, leading rescuers to speculate that the hole was new.
“We’re pretty confident we’re in the right place. We’re hoping there’s still a gap where he can be,” John Bacha, chief of the Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Company, told Triblive.
Dozens of firefighters on the scene used an excavator, ladders and hoses to remove material from the edges and inside the hole as they searched for Pollard. The hole had grown to the size of a small backyard swimming pool by Tuesday evening.
Steve Limani, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Police, said the shoe was about 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.
“I almost feel like it opened up when she was standing on it,” Limani said.
Pollard lives in a small neighborhood across the street from where her car and granddaughter were found, Limani said.
The young girl “nodded off in the car and woke up. Grandma never came back,” Limani said. The child remained in the car until two police officers rescued her.
Police said sinkholes, which are depressions in the ground, occur in the area due to subsidence from coal mining. Sinkholes are fairly common due to collapsed caves, old mines or material dissolution, Paul Santi, professor of geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, said earlier this year.
A team from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that responded to the scene concluded that the underground void was likely the result of work at the Marguerite Mine, last operated by the HC Frick Coke Company in 1952. The Pittsburgh coal seam is about 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface in this area.
Neil Shader, a spokesman for the department, said the state Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will survey the site after the search is complete to see if the hole was indeed caused by a mine subsidence.
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