Pennsylvania often is split into its major parts. It is Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east and everything else in the middle.

Aside from the handful of cities, it is filled with almost 17 million acres of forest and more than 7 million acres of farmland. It is state parks and national forest and 85,000 miles of waterways.

And below and between and under all of that is another Pennsylvania, easily forgotten.

Pennsylvania used to be a leader in coal mining. To be fair, it is still the third-largest producer of coal in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But today that means it produces 6.7% of the nation’s coal, less than half of neighboring West Virginia’s 14%. Wyoming is first with 41.2%.

Coal is so much a part of the state’s history and legacy that dominance in the industry seems like something that just ended. For many places in Pennsylvania, those jobs are just a generation away. But Pennsylvania’s zenith in coal production was 1918 — more than a century in the rearview mirror.

What we have left are the fossils of the coal industry. There are streams still being cleaned up from acid drainage. There are strip-mined swaths of land still being reclaimed.

And under the earth are the mines we don’t remember.

There are still about 40 active underground mining operations in the state. That is nothing compared to the more than 11,000 abandoned mines known to exist in the state. Most of those are in the western half of Pennsylvania where coal didn’t just heat homes. It also fueled the steel industry.

That makes sinkholes Pennsylvania’s equivalent of California’s earthquakes or Florida’s hurricanes. They are our special brand of catastrophe. Yes, sinkholes happen elsewhere, but Pennsylvania is like a wheel of Swiss cheese lightly covered by a blanket of dirt and grass. You never know where the holes are going to be.

On Friday, on Day 4 of search efforts, authorities recovered the body of Elizabeth Pollard, 64, who had gone out Monday evening to search for her missing cat, Pepper. The ground near Monday’s Union Restaurant in Marguerite collapsed over a mine most people didn’t know was buried there.

“It had been deteriorating over the course of 75 years,” said Pennsylvania State Trooper Steve Limani.

A mine rescue is difficult and dangerous. It’s an effort to find the missing person while still maintaining the stability of the ground above so the situation doesn’t grow even more precarious.

The fact that Pollard was found was impressive. Limani was glad to be able to deliver closure to her family while still saying, “We grieve with you.”

But Pollard’s loss is one that is too easy to see happening again.

In coal’s heyday, regulation was spotty. The closed tunnels and shafts can be like landmines waiting for the wrong step or shovel to become a problem.

The state is set to begin a $10.5 million subsidence prevention project in Belle Vernon. It’s the kind of thing more areas need, along with better assessment of where mines are and what condition they are in.

The collapse that claimed Pollard’s life shows why prevention efforts are necessary. What often gets attention are the more common costs, like property damage or rerouted traffic. There also can be expensive complications to building projects when an unknown mine is encountered.

But there is no way to mitigate the loss of a grandmother who was just looking for her lost cat when a mine opened up beneath her.

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