https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/07/xcel-energy-texas-wildfires/
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Homeowner Melanie McQuiddy filed the initial lawsuit against the company in Hemphill County on Friday, claiming that a splintered pole ignited the fire when it fell. On Saturday, Canadian businessman Salem Abraham told The Texas Tribune of his plans to file a suit this month against Xcel and Osmose Utility Services, a Georgia-based company that inspects Xcel's equipment, over the pole for damages to his ranch and his brotherโs land.
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The basics of power pole managment:
power poles get old and NEED replacement periodically.
In New England this happens all the time.
the problem seems to be when companies are bought by outside interests and the poles are just left to rot.
and in California they get helped to fall down by chainsaws, so it seems.
the 'buy it and let it rot' methodogy of utility company aggregators in the leveraged capital industry, who are really just money managers and not utility specialists, is wide scale societial failure! So sad.
In california you could use the Google maps walk about feature and inspect the poles and see 'huh, all of these poles are very very old and need to be replaced'