[gunzel]

Not so much bushfires damaging electrical infrastructure as electrical infrastructure starting fires. A large portion of Victoria's worst day of bushfire was sparked by a faulty power line and the electricity distribution network (22kV and below) is responsible for a good portion of fire starts, especially those lines that utilise a single wire with an earth return (SWER). The recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires in regard to the electricity network are available at http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-R... and contain a whole lot of background information. Suffice to say that the recommendation (27) of the wholesale burying of thousands of kilometres of SWER line at the cost of billions of dollars haven't gone far.