Part of Maceió, a city of nearly a million people on Brazil’s northeast coast, is facing the potential catastrophe of disappearing underground. The geological problems caused by the petrochemical giant Braskem, which have been going on for years, have worsened in recent days and have given rise to concern. Five districts of this city are full of mines for the extraction of rock salt for the production of caustic soda and PVC. Seepage has been noted for some time and the ground is gradually sinking, meaning that 55,000 residents have had to be evacuated in recent years. The quiet streets, lined with modest houses with gardens, are now ghost districts where no one lives anymore. Almost no residents pass through there anymore, but in the last few hours the authorities have cordoned off the area: the collapse seems imminent.
The Alagoas State Civil Defense reported in a statement Thursday evening that “studies show that one of the mines monitored is at imminent risk of collapse.” In this part of the city there are 35 mines that actually resemble wells and have an average depth of have more than 800 meters. Number 18 is particularly worrying. It is located in the Mutange district, very close to a lagoon where boats are also prohibited from passing through. The mine is sinking rapidly, by two meters in the last three days. Apparently everything was accelerated as five tremors were detected during the month of November, further exacerbating subsoil instability. The question is no longer whether the surface of the neighborhoods will give way or not, but how and when this will happen. The mayor’s office declared a state of emergency for 180 days and set up an emergency cabinet.
José Rinaldo Märzio, next to cracks in his house, in 2020. AMANDA PEROBELLI (Portal)
Civil Defense has warned that a crater 300 meters in diameter could form, a huge hole into which the Maracana Stadium could fit. The collapse would not only swallow part of the city, but also spill subsurface salt into the adjacent lagoon, causing an environmental tragedy in a valuable mangrove area. With time against us, the city prepares as best it can for disaster. No one lived in the most critical area for a long time, but not far away, 20 families were still resisting, having been evicted after their homes were classified in the risk zone by a court order. Until now, the last residents had decided to live with the possibility of a disaster because their homes were not yet on the list of compensation that Braskem has paid in recent years. A hospital also transferred all of its patients, even though it is several blocks from Mine 18. According to the city council, 83 people have currently agreed to be transferred to reception centers in city schools.
But while some resignedly packed their bags, others filed charges against Braskem and the authorities. This Friday, residents of the Flexais favelas blocked traffic by burning tires and branches. The residents of these neighborhoods have been demanding for years that they be relocated to a safe area, like so many other compensated neighbors, but the response they always heard was that this particular area was not in danger. The recommendation now is that they leave their homes as quickly as possible.
To understand the current alarm, we have to go back to the 1970s, when the company Salgema Industrias Químicas SA (later Braskem) began extracting rock salt in this area on the outskirts of the city, which was then beginning to urbanize. The most serious problems began in 2018, when heavy rains and a subsequent minor earthquake caused cracks and fissures in thousands of houses, as well as craters in the streets, some dozens of meters wide. A year later, Brazil’s Geological Survey confirmed that mining was the cause of the ground instability and the first evacuation orders were issued. At first there were the districts of Pinheiro, Mutange and Bebedouro, but as the situation worsened, Bom Parto and Farol were also included. More than 14,000 houses had to be evacuated. At the same time, the company began closing the caverns, which have been filled with sand in recent years for stability reasons.
View of an area where houses have been removed in the Mutange district.STRINGER (Portal)
But no matter what happens, mining has already left a scar on the city that will be difficult to repair, say experts like geologist and professor at the University of São Paulo (UPS) Pedro Luiz Cortês. “These areas will hardly be able to be occupied again. Maybe after several years of monitoring some of them will see some stability and can be re-inhabited, but I don’t see a very bright future in terms of re-inhabitation and rehabilitation. We will have a kind of “Brazilian Chernobyl”, a city that is not unaffected by the force of a tragedy and by the difficulty of restoring normality in the affected area,” he said in statements to the UOL portal.