An intense search is underway for a Pennsylvania grandmother who authorities believe has been trapped in a deep sinkhole connected to an unstable abandoned mine since Monday.
Family members of Elizabeth Pollard, 64, called authorities at around 1:00 a.m. Tuesday to say that she and her five-year-old granddaughter had not returned since going out to look for her missing cat the prior afternoon, CNN reported.
Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Steve Limani confirmed that Pollard’s car was later found parked near a restaurant in Unity Township — with the granddaughter alone inside.
A fresh sinkhole was discovered just steps away from the car.
“We, at that point in time, realized that this could be a very bad situation,” Limani told reporters.
The girl had been in the car in below-freezing weather for nearly 12 hours, but she was otherwise unharmed.
“She was just a five-year-old girl that was waiting in the car for her grandmother to come back,” Limani said, adding that the child was unable to tell authorities what happened to Pollard.
The sinkhole, which is about the width of a manhole and around 30 feet deep, “wasn’t there earlier in the day,” and was covered by “just grass interwoven where she had stepped,” Limani explained.
While a massive search-and-rescue effort is in progress, authorities have not heard any noise coming from the sinkhole and the mine it is connected to is very fragile.
Engineers have been using water to help flush out dirt from the hole, but Limani said that the process is stressing the structure of the abandoned mine even further.
“We have to be very careful with the water issues we’ve been experiencing,” the state trooper said, according to CBS News. “The integrity of that mine is starting to become compromised.”
Despite the lack of insight into where exactly Pollard may be inside the deep hole, Limani said that she could very much still be alive in an air pocket.
“There’s been nothing that said she is not alive or she could not possibly have survived,” he said. “There’s nothing that said 100 percent definitively it couldn’t have happened. And until that 100 percent happens, how could I say it’s any other way?”
“Let’s be honest, we need to get a little bit lucky,” he added.
Experts said that the temperature below ground is 55 degrees, significantly warmer than the above-ground Pennsylvania weather.
So far, searchers have only spotted a shoe in the mine by using a camera.
“Let’s just say it’s a modern shoe, not something you would find in a coal mine in Marguerite in 1940,” Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Company Chief John Bacha said.
Pollard’s son, Axel Hayes, told CBS Pittsburgh that he is still hopeful:
“Right now I just hope she’s alive and well, that she’s going to make it, that my niece still has a grandmother, that I still have a mother that I can talk to,” he said in a virtual interview.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.