Tragedy is a representation of action or inaction that is worthy of serious attention. That it took nearly 17 hours to put out the fire caused by an explosion at a chemical park in Xiangshui county in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, speaks volumes of the magnitude of the tragedy that claimed 47 lives, and left 90 people seriously injured and at least 500 hospitalized.

Although the investigation, coordinated by the central authorities, is still underway, the explosion, which ripped through the plant at 2:48 pm on Thursday, is likely to be identified as a serious accident caused by human negligence.

Over the past six years, three such accidents have happened — in a poultry farm in Changchun, Jilin province, in which 121 people died; a chemical company in Kunshan, Jiangsu, which claimed 146 lives; and a chemical warehouse in Tianjin, which killed 165 people. And like before, the owners and managers of the enterprise — Tianjiayi Chemical Company in this case — will be held accountable for the accident, and the local safety production supervisory department officials and their superiors hauled up for dereliction of duty.

But the question is: Why have the different mechanisms designed to ensure production safety, which probably were improved each time such an accident happened, failed time and time again? Notably, the State Administration of Work Safety instructed the Jiangsu provincial administration of work safety in February last year to ask Tianjiayi to address 13 potential safety hazards it had found during a safety inspection a month earlier.

Ironically, the inspection was prompted by a blast in a chemical company in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, in late 2017 — which claimed 10 lives — and the inspection had exposed 208 safety production loopholes in 18 chemical enterprises, Tianjiayi included, in five cities in the province. Which means the warning, which if heeded could have prevented Thursday’s accident, fell on deaf ears.

Those responsible for ignoring the warning should be held accountable and punished.

The Xiangshui tragedy should prompt the authorities to initiate a coordinated, thorough production safety investigation in all enterprises dealing with dangerous chemicals to identify potential safety hazards and make sure all safety loopholes are plugged.

A tragedy should teach us a lesson. President Xi Jinping, now on a state visit to Italy, has urged the local authorities and relevant departments to draw lessons from the recent grave cases to eliminate safety hazards and strictly implement the safety production accountability system to prevent accidents, and thus better protect the lives and properties of the people. It’s time for the officials to act.