Grandma looking for cat apparently falls into sinkhole, prompting rescue efforts in treacherous terrain

UNITY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP) — Rescuers contemplated the safest way Wednesday to search for a woman who apparently fell into a Pennsylvania sinkhole while looking for her lost cat, saying a crumbling old coal mine beneath the surface was complicating efforts and endangering workers.

Crews worked through the night in the Unity Township community of Marguerite to find Elizabeth Pollard, 64. A state police spokesperson said early Wednesday they were reassessing their tactics to avoid putting the rescuers in danger.

“The integrity of that mine is starting to become compromised,” Trooper Steve Limani told reporters at the scene about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh.

Sinkholes occur in the area because of subsidence from coal mining activity. Rescuers had been using water to break down and remove clay and dirt from the mine, which has been closed since the 1950s, but that was increasing the risk “for potential other mine subsidence to take place,” Limani said.

“We’re probably going to have to switch gears” and do a more complicated dig, he said.

On Tuesday, crews lowered a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, but it detected nothing. Another camera lowered into the hole showed what could be a shoe about 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface, Limani said. Searchers also deployed drones and thermal imaging equipment to no avail.

Marguerite Fire Chief Scot Graham, the incident commander, said access to the immediate area surrounding the hole was being tightly controlled and monitored, with rescuers attached by harness.

“We cannot judge as to what’s going on underneath us. Again, you had a small hole on top but as soon as you stuck a camera down through to look, you had this big void,” Graham said. “And it was all different depths. The process is long, is tedious. We have to make sure that we are keeping safety in the forefront as well as the rescue effort.”

Pleasant Unity Fire Chief John Bacha, the operations officer at the scene, said they were “hoping that there’s a void that she could still be in.”

Pollard’s family called police at about 1 a.m. Tuesday to say she had not been seen since going out Monday evening to search for Pepper, her cat. The temperature dropped well below freezing that night.

In an interview with CBS News, Pollard’s son, Axel Hayes, said he is experiencing a mix of emotions.

“I’m upset that she hasn’t been found yet, and I’m really just worried about whether she’s still down there, where she is down there, or she went somewhere and found somewhere safer,” Hayes said. “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.”

Police said they found Pollard’s car parked behind Monday’s Union Restaurant in Marguerite, about 20 feet (6 meters) from the sinkhole.

Hunters and restaurant workers in the area said they had not noticed the manhole-size opening in the hours before Pollard disappeared, leading rescuers to speculate that the sinkhole was new.

“It almost feels like it opened up with her standing on top of it,” Limani said.

Searchers accessed the mine late Tuesday afternoon and dug a separate entrance out of concern that the ground around the sinkhole opening was not stable.

“Let’s be honest, we need to get a little bit lucky, right?” Limani said Wednesday. “We need a little bit of luck on our side. We need a little bit of God’s good blessing on our side, right?”

Pollard lives in a small neighborhood across the street from where her car and granddaughter were located, Limani said.

The young girl “nodded off in the car and woke up. Grandma never came back,” Limani said. The child stayed in the car until two troopers rescued her.

It’s not clear what happened to Pepper.

Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Kathy McCormack in New Hampshire and Sarah Brumfield in Maryland contributed to this report.