You mean that they should have thought of burying the power cables decades ago? Who would have taken the earnings hit required by that? Who would give up their bonus merely to ensure that millions of customers would be safe from a freak storm decades later?
The idea of burying the lines has been in the news. It was said (don’t know from where the info came), that burying the lines would add over $100 a month to the bills. What I am wondering is whether they could just be buried in the areas that have the huge old trees that seem to have caused the most problems. Don’t know what the percentage of the total unburied area is in big trees. I know that in downtown DC most lines ARE buried. There they have other problems, water and salt in the ground in winter, transformers burning out in the hot summer, etc.