Our son lives in Boulder and saw the fire in its very early stages when it was still a grass fire. He went outside for lunch and from his workplace at the base of the flatirons he saw the brush fire in the 'greenbelt'. He climbed up a nearby mesa for a better look and spoke with a police officer who told him about the power lines starting the fire.
He lives west of the resulting catastrophe. He said he couldn't understand why Boulder still has overhead power lines given the periodic high winds and arid climate. If ever there were a place that should bury them, it's Boulder. There are overhead power lines running up into the mountains west of Boulder as well, which caused him some anxiety last night. There would have been no way for firefighters to protect the university or other structures in Boulder if a line had sparked another fire west of town.
I've often thought we should bury the power lines in our mid-Atlantic area as well. We are very vulnerable to ice storms and tropical storm remnants. Our heavy tree canopy drops limbs on power lines in winter, and entire trees uproot during tropical storms. It's a recipe for constant line repair. We're grateful that we don't have Boulder's fire hazards, but power outages are common here. Lots of homeowners have backup generators. Very wasteful, to say nothing of being ugly.
How is having a backup generator wasteful? And with a screen name like "Think free or die" I would think that you'd support a person taking responsibility for themselves as a positive. Guess you don't really believe in that.
Same here in the south. Every time a tornado comes through, thousands are without power for days, weeks, see Louisiana this past hurricane season, took months to get the power back on. We have had new poles put up around here three times in the past four or five years because of tornadoes.