this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
183 points (99.5% liked)

News

23446 readers
4282 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 43 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

They call it Pittsburgh because at any moment a gaping pit can open beneath you.

[–] Atropos 57 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

Jesus, imagine being a 64 year old lady, and suddenly you're falling more than 30 feet into a dark hole in the ground. Terrifying.

[–] themeatbridge 46 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Pennsylvania overdeveloped tons of residential and rural land on top of limestone and dolomite deposits. For a hundred years, we've been clearing and paving and tilling land, creating groundwater aquifers that slowly erode the subterranean minerals, leaving invisible death traps all over the state. Local building codes have overcorrected with extremely restrictive stormwater management requirements that make it expensive to develop new land (not that this is a bad thing).

[–] LaunchesKayaks 6 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I live in swpa and it's the norm to assume every house has mine shafts under it. Some are obviously worse than others, but the mines are so extensive that you could dig anywhere and probably find one

[–] AngryCommieKender 1 points 3 hours ago

I thought people weren't allowed to live in Centralia anymore?

/s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

Minecraft rules

[–] Wxfisch 9 points 17 hours ago

In this case it seems to be abandoned mine subsidence which at least in SWPA (where this happened, outside of Latrobe in Westmoreland county) is a huge issue. We had to do a search when we bought our house to see if there were known abandoned mines on our property which would have required we bought subsidence Insurance from DEP.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago

Superman's movie made me fear this for as long as I have memory.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

Honestly sounds terrifying for anyone?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I don't even feel like imagining being a middle aged dude and having that happen.

[–] Atropos 2 points 19 hours ago

Knees go 'pop'?

[–] Hawke 15 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

So they found her car but what about the cat!?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

"It's not clear what happened to Pepper."

[–] Skanky 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It's making a plan to build a canal in Panama

[–] egrets 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

A cat, a plan, a canal: Pataca.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You win the racecar award.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit 7 points 14 hours ago

Draw a racecar award.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

They're afraid? Think what she's feeling right about now. 😶

[–] [email protected] 21 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Uh... Nothing? She's very likely dead if she fell in and was covered

[–] LaunchesKayaks 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It's been below 32 degrees the whole time she's been missing. I live relatively close to that area. There's no way she's stayed warm enough if she's truly in that sinkhole.

[–] EtherWhack 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You can't really base anything off of surface temp though as underground typically remains more temperate.

[–] LaunchesKayaks 2 points 4 hours ago

People can die of exposure in like 50 degree weather. I feel like the inside of a sinkhole in winter isn't a balmy room temp. I hope I'm wrong, though.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

They're still treating this as a rescue situation, because these sinkholes can have large air pockets and are warmer than the surface air.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

So do sink holes just appear out of nowhere or is industrial exploitation destabilizing things?

[–] uberdroog 25 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] LaunchesKayaks 4 points 7 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I remember reading about that in the newspaper when it happened. Absolutely terrifying.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago

Having woken up dead a few times myself I do not recommend

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

Fracking, drilling, and coal mining certainly exacerbate the already geologically unstable terrain of Pennsylvania.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I hope the cat's not in there.

[–] TropicalDingdong 14 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Cats gonna show up in a day or two.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

Once it's hungry enough. Ahem.

[–] TropicalDingdong 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Thteven 14 points 19 hours ago

I'm willing to bet she'd much rather be above ground.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] LaunchesKayaks 2 points 7 hours ago

Definitely not a good place to be rn. I live in Pa and it kind of really sucks.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 20 hours ago

Cats knocking things over as usual... SMH My Head 🤦‍♂️

-/joke