Comment Re:What? (Score 1, Troll) 267
1. Bullshit. Power companies here are given massive liberty to make vegetation safe for transmission, even that outside of their property. They cut holes out of trees to pass through all the time.
2. This hardware was *way* past its useful life.
3. And they detected a fault but chose not to cut power.
4. See Colorado (which has massively dry areas and high winds) and their wildfire rates with insulated lines (which cost more money).
5. PG&E rakes in billions of dollars in net profit per year, but leaves their infrastructure to rot.
PG&E will start cutting power and playing the black-out game to get more concessions from the CA PUC for infrastructure repair.
If they don't, they're idiots. It's what the incentive structure dictates right now.