Rescuers searching for grandma down 30-foot sinkhole switching gears fearing more holes will open
Rescuers desperately searching for a Pennsylvania grandmother down a 30-foot sinkhole are “switching gears” through fears the ground could further open up below them.Elizabeth Pollard, 64, has not been seen for more than 40 hours since she is assumed to have tumbled into an abandoned Pennsylvania coal mine while searching for her missing cat, with her 5-year-old granddaughter found asleep in her nearby car.Rescuers believe the huge sinkhole opened up as Pollard walked over the area — and fear that ongoing efforts to find her will put search crews in danger.“The integrity of that mine is starting to become compromised,” Trooper Steve Limani told reporters Wednesday, PennLive reported.Water being pumped through to clear clay and dirt from the mine could cause “other mine subsidence to take place,” the trooper said.“It’s putting some of the people at risk.
And we’re probably going to have to switch gears, which might be a slower switching of gears and a little bit more complicated of a dig,” he warned.Limani vowed to continue the search until Pollard is found.The grandma from Unity Township vanished around 5 p.m.Monday while searching for her missing feline named Pepper with her 5-year-old granddaughter.
The young girl was found safe around 2:50 a.m.Tuesday morning asleep in her grandma’s vehicle — which was found near the large fissure that had opened up behind Monday’s Union Bar and Grille.“The sinkhole appears to have been created during the time Ms.
Pollard was walking around.We don’t see a time when it would have been created earlier,” Limani said on Tuesday.Some 100 emergency responders had been using a vacuum truck to suck the clay-like earth out of the sinkhole so they could place cameras and listening devices inside but no signs of life have been found.“Until you’re telling us there’s no chance, there’s a chance, and I know that there might be mathematical difficulties or maybe some science, but there’s people t...