Authorities fear a Pennsylvania woman was swallowed by a sinkhole while looking for her cat
Authorities fear a Pennsylvania woman was swallowed by a sinkhole while looking for her cat
Authorities fear a grandmother who disappeared while looking for her cat may have been swallowed up by a sinkhole that recently opened up in a western Pennsylvania village.
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.
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 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.
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
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