This paper presents an ethnographic approach about an ongoing disaster caused by the land subsidence and the consequent ruination of five neighborhoods in Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil, due to decades of salt mining by the petrochemical company Braskem. In February 2018, an earthquake hit the Pinheiro neighborhood, causing cracks in its streets and buildings. Confirmation on the cause of the cracks only became public, however, a year after the earthquake, while the disaster spread from a few streets in the neighborhood to an area of 300 hectares. Since 2019, around 60,000 people have been compulsorily displaced from their homes under the Financial Compensation and Relocation Support Program, in addition to thousands who live in socioeconomic isolation in the surrounding areas of those designated as at risk. The program is heavily criticized due to its inclusion and exclusion parameters, and low compensation amounts, besides the fact that the company becomes the owner of the compensated properties, with the possibility of using the affected areas for commercial and housing profits after the soil stabilizes. Throughout the paper, I discuss how the disaster is experienced by those affected by it, highlighting the dimension of a slow disaster that drags on over the years without residents being aware of its gravity, and without a catastrophic event to mark its end or beginning; the discrepancies in my interlocutors’ experiences regarding temporalities and institutional measures presented by the authorities and the media; and the disaster as a phenomenon that deepens socio-economic and racial inequalities. Finally, I argue that the process of decay experienced by the affected in losing their homes represents an opportunity for Braskem to produce value - since it is now the owner of the affected neighborhoods. The case demonstrates how capitalist development produces a stratified social experience, including the possibility of tragedy being compensatory.