Sonoma County, CA here. Currently under the power shutoff and went through both the Tubbs fire in 2017 and the Kincade fire just last month: It goes beyond the

Sonoma County, CA here. Currently under the power shutoff and went through both the Tubbs fire in 2017 and the Kincade fire just last month: It goes beyond the line maintenance issue - that is really a red herring IMO: Clearing all fuels X-meters around lines doesn't help when you have hundreds of acres of fuel that hasn't burned in almost 80 years on either side of it, as we do here. The bigger issue is that California has gradually seen a decrease in controlled burns in these areas. A controlled burn is a fire set by Cal-Fire/Forestry managers in order to mitigate fuel buildup in fireprone areas. When I was a kid, it was common to have pretty large controlled burns. My father was involved in setting them up. Anecdotally, in speaking with him, as more people (reaD: money) moved into the area, there was more and more uproar about controlled burns - eventually they just tailed off because people would be scared, complain about the smoke, nuisance etc. TL;DR: Maintaining the lines and clearing brush doesn't matter when you have thousands of acres of fuel that hasn't burned in 60-80 years. That is a state/regional management issue. And when you buildup that much potential energy in an area, the laws of thermodynamics tend to take care of it.