They have to think out of the box and prevent the spread...maybe some kind of asbestos like matting along the path?? I don't know what would be practical. Or maybe stop the overhead electric...period. They've done that in my area...and there are less outage problems.
Or use the obvious alternative....natural gas....gas stoves, gas heat etc etc...it's all underground.
“Can’t blame that on a power company.”
I’m sorry but the power company is to blame if it turns out it was a power related incident. PG&E in California has been held responsible for several major fires for failure to clear the trees off their lines and improperly maintained equipment. Now if the weather forecast has winds over certain mile-per-hour rating PG&E shuts the power off, inconvenient, but better than having your house burn down.
Insurance companies will typically give discounts if your home has fire inhibitor stuff installed, like sprinklers, etc. Other than that, I blame Democrat governors for a lot of the wildfires that have occurred in Colorado in the last 20+ years - not this one, where the power lines went down. Democrats intentionally mismanage forests and wild lands in the name of “ecology,” not clearing away deadwood and looking the other way when Mexican cartels grow pot on public lands - and pocketing taxpayer dollars instead of using them to maintain and police the forests.
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.