Huh. I guess it must be easier to just do that and let people bake to death on the hottest days of the year than to hire crews to go out and trim branches around transmission lines now and then like every other freaking power company in the country does.
That's a tiny part of the overall problem. Where my parents live (just for an example, I don't want to specifically state the city) PG&E isn't just trimming trees they're for free removing trees that are dead and/or within X distance to the power lines for people.
Thing is, the drought has hit the forested areas really hard along with bark beetles spreading badly in sections. Whole stands are getting clearcut since the trees are dead and a fire hazard.
They and the county can barely keep up in one city and that is one small town, not a bigger area. CA with the drought and forests that are extremely overgrown (I believe historic density of the old growth forests is 20-30 trees per acre and the current density is around 120 trees per acre with almost no forest that isn't old growth) is basically a tinderbox that can't be cleared fast enough to be safe.
Fuck PG&E after the camp fire and everything else they have done, but they are doing tree trimming.
It's just tree trimming in CA currently is like trying to put out a forest fire by spitting on it and the fuel load is a major problem that needs to be dealt with on a county/state level or the fires will keep on going. Especially since a lot of the native trees and plants in CA forests rely on the natural fires from lightning to reproduce or grow and are not adapted in the slightest for the sheer infernos that currently happen and instead of a healthy forest, you end up with these massive burn scars that have great difficulty regrowing.