Rescuers were contemplating the safest way on 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 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 on Wednesday they were reassessing their tactics to avoid putting themselves at risk.
“The integrity of that mine is starting to become compromised,” Trooper Steve Limani told reporters in the township near Latrobe, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh.
“We’re probably going to have to switch gears” and do a more complicated dig, he said.
On Tuesday, they lowered a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, but it detected nothing.
A camera lowered into the hole showed what could be a shoe about 30 feet below the surface, Trooper Limani said.
“It almost feels like it opened up with her standing on top of it,” he said.
Ms Pollard’s family called police at about 1am Tuesday to say she had not been seen since going out Monday evening to search for Pepper, her cat.
Police said they found Ms Pollard’s car parked near Monday’s Union Restaurant in Marguerite.
The manhole-size opening had not been seen by hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Ms Pollard’s disappearance, leading rescuers to speculate the sinkhole was new.
Authorities used an excavator to dig in the area, where temperatures dropped below freezing overnight.
“We are pretty confident we are in the right place. We’re hoping there is still a void she could be in,” Pleasant Valley Fire Chief John Bacha told Triblive.
Ms Pollard lives in a small neighbourhood across the street from where her car and granddaughter were located, Trooper Limani said.
The young girl “nodded off in the car and woke up. Grandma never came back”, he said.
The child stayed in the car until two troopers rescued her. It is not clear what happened to Pepper.
