I lived in Africa. The parks used to run controlled burns, every year or two, of the savanna grass.

They tended to do this during the [very] wet season.

But PG&E is still on the hook for taking better care of their infrastructure.

It all comes down to dollars and [non]sense. Some actuary has determined that an occasional lawsuit and rotten press run is cheaper than maintaining the wires.

Here in New York, many of the buried water mains that transfer water to the city from upstate are well over a century old. Many are made of cast iron, and even wood.

There’s no plan to dig them up and replace them with more robust materials. They just wait for them to fail, then replace the small part that failed.

They do give city water some real taste, though. It’s probably actually nutritious.