North of the Mason-Dixon Met-Ed was severly reprimanded by the PA Public Utility Commission for its slow response following Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003...a storm that had me 96 hours without power.
The PA-PUC mandated a very aggressive schedule of tree trimming and other preventive maintenance plus installing cut-off fuses at the beginning of long branches of the line. Some of my neighbors’ lane strech 1/2 mile or farther, now their lines are isolated at the beginning of their branch lines.
All that has helped. but still endured two 50 hour outages last year.
The extension to another block where folks didn't want the tree trimming got a circuit breaker so they don't bring us down anymore.
It's been a definite improvement in reliability.
Buying a sine wave inverter to run off a bank of 12volt batteries and hooking up to the cars for recharging takes care providing minimal 120v backup (has to be manually rigged).