I don't know the details specific to this case, but its a hard problem. Wires from that long ago had different tech, and may have faced metal shortages from wor

I don't know the details specific to this case, but its a hard problem. Wires from that long ago had different tech, and may have faced metal shortages from world events. I would not try to imply it was a malicious thing. Europeans don't get it. They don't have a lot of overhead wires. Everything is buried because everything is so dense that its cost effective to do so. Overhead wires are cheap to put up, and EXTREMELY expensive to replace. It's dangerous work. And it's slow. You can't just turn off people's power, so the lines are live while they do replacements. 40k miles is going to cost tens of billions of dollars and take... way longer than anyone is going to budget time for. It's probably just not possible. Tree cutting usually refers to trimming branches so the canopy is not near the wire. It's far from a perfect solution. There's almost always regulatory requirements to do this. Meanwhile the forests are all super dry and have years of extra brush at the bottom because the state has done a terrible job of forestry management. It's a tough situation.