[hnuser77]

My understanding was that the main reason power has to be turned off because there could be 1) vegetation contact with the power lines in windy conditions 2) power lines blowing away in the wind. California has been windy since before the invention of electricity, so what's changed? They can't build power lines to handle some wind that happens every other year since the beginning of human settlement? If they are failing to trim and remove dying trees around power lines, that is a direct maintenance failure. Besides PG&E, at the forestry management level, not clearing brush or doing controlled burns is direct maintenance failure.