Federal government recognizes state of emergency in Maceió

The federal government recognized a state of emergency in Maceió (AL) due to the damage caused by the sinking of a deactivated Braskem rock salt mine. The government’s decision was published this Friday (1st) in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU). The imminent risk of land collapse led Civil Defense to evacuate around five thousand people from a neighborhood in the city.

The Ministry of Integration and Regional Development (MIDR) said it is monitoring the situation in the capital of Alagoas, which has suffered, in recent days, repeated seismic shocks caused by mining activities. According to the ministry, minister Waldez Góes participated this Friday in a meeting with a team from the National Civil Defense, which is on site, informed the Brazil Agency.

The ministers of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Combating Hunger, Wellington Dias, and Transport, Renan Filho, are in Maceió to monitor the situation. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP), who is from Alagoas, already requested this morning to “make resources available and issue a provisional measure” to guarantee help to Maceió City Hall.

“The serious environmental, human and structural crisis in Maceió needs urgent support from the federal government. I asked the responsible bodies to provide resources and issue a provisional measure that guarantees Maceió city hall the conditions to serve affected residents and undertake actions to combat the problem generated by the exploitation of rock salt”, said Lira in social network.

Recognition of the state of emergency facilitates the adoption of measures to assist the municipality. The situation is more serious in the neighborhoods of Mutange, Pinheiro and Bebedouro, which suffered in the last seismic shocks due to the movement of the cavity of one of Braskem’s mines. This Thursday (30), the city of Maceió declared a state of emergency for 180 days due to the imminent collapse of mine 18, which could cause the ground to sink in several neighborhoods.

The area is already unoccupied and the movement of boats by the population is restricted in the Lagoa Mundaú region, in the Mutange neighborhood. Maceió Civil Defense reported that the last measurement showed that the accumulated vertical movement in the area is 1.42 meters and the vertical speed is 2.6 centimeters per hour.

In a statement, Braskem said that it continues to be mobilized and monitoring the situation at mine 18, taking the appropriate measures to minimize the impact of possible occurrences and that the area has been isolated since Tuesday (28). The company highlights that the region has been uninhabited since 2020. “This monitoring, with state-of-the-art equipment, was implemented to guarantee the detection of any movement on the ground in the region and enable monitoring by the authorities and the adoption of preventive measures such as those currently being adopted at this time”, said the company.