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.
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.