Comment by hedora

If you don't maintain power lines, then they'll eventually cause fires regardless of where they are.

PG&E employees were caught skimming the money for line maintenance. At this point, the whole grid is falling apart.

The power poles in our area have over 20 degree bends in them, and are nearly as old as I am. Last year, we had dozens of trees take out the single digit mile line between ourselves and the freeway, and PG&E's availability was barely one nine. It used to make news if our area had a power outage over 12 hours. Now, it doesn't make news if the outage is under a week.

Other states in the US do not have problems like this. (Puerto Rico does, but it's not a state.)