State police in Pennsylvania said Friday that the body of a woman who is thought to have fallen into a new sinkhole this week while looking for her cat has been found in an old mine that the sinkhole opened up.
Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was found dead in a mine in the southwestern Pennsylvania town of Marguerite on Friday just after 11 a.m., according to Trooper Steve Limani of the Pennsylvania State Police. He said that crews were still working to get her body back early Friday afternoon.
Limani said that Pollard’s family has been told.
Linani said, “The family kept telling us, ‘We want to have the body back so we can bury her.'” “We just wanted to be sure as a group that we could do that.”
“Not far away from where we believe she was when she fell through the sinkhole,” Limani said of the body found. “Getting rid of all the dirt was just a matter of work.”
A news gathering on Friday afternoon said that heavy machinery was needed to get Pollard’s body out of the mine after it started to fall apart.
The finding ends a search that began early Tuesday morning when a family member told state police that Pollard and her 5-year-old granddaughter had gone in a car to look for Pollard’s cat on Monday afternoon and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.
Police were looking for the woman and found her car parked next to a restaurant early Tuesday morning. Her granddaughter was still safe inside after being there for almost 12 hours. Just a few steps away was a new, deep sinkhole.
As part of the rescue effort, workers pumped water through a long-abandoned mine at the site to clear out debris. The debris was then vacuumed away to make it easier to see what was below. But by Wednesday evening, state police said they no longer thought they would find her alive. They said that cameras and sound detectors had not picked up any signs of life, and the mine was too dangerous for searchers to keep using the methods they had been using.
State police said that the pit where Pollard was thought to have fallen is in an area with limestone bedrock and had almost no ground left. Officials say it’s likely that the sinkhole showed up on Monday.
A government database shows that there are two abandoned mines close to the sinkhole. The National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs says that these mines are the “highest danger to citizens’ lives” because of safety and environmental issues.
Mike O’Barto, who is the chair of the Unity Township Board of Supervisors, said that Marguerite and the rest of his close-knit community are sad.
He said, “We’re made up of a bunch of old coal mining towns.” “And when someone is hurt, we’re all hurt.” I pray that something terrible like this will never happen again.
Trooper Limani said that the underground complex where Pollard was found was “almost like a little town under this town.”
In order to try to avoid another accident, he said, experts from the state department of mining will soon start the long process of backfilling and shoring up the mine.
Groundwater slowly wearing away the rock that holds the soil together is what causes most sinkholes. The US Geological Survey says that Pennsylvania’s limestone bedrock makes it especially prone to sinkhole harm.
