Even if that's the case, it is rendered irrelevant by the fact that many people knew about the dangerous situation for years and it was heavily discussed over m

Even if that's the case, it is rendered irrelevant by the fact that many people knew about the dangerous situation for years and it was heavily discussed over many official communiques. It's not like every time one of those conversations happened, they were resolved with "Oh, it's OK because the flammable stuff all gets filed together." If we want to learn from this tragedy, what we really need to understand is, when the dangerous situation was so well known, why was nothing done? The answer appears to be a combination of unclear spheres of accountability and lack of incentives. We accept that sometimes, commercial actors will behave in wildly antisocial ways — such as the shipping company who owned the rotting, explosive-laden MV Rhosus abandoning it in Beirut harbor. We rely on government to protect us from such dangers — but sometimes it doesn't. Why?