In my area they just trimmed trees for the first time in 12-13 years. Wires were in a lot of the trees. I have never seen anyone come and inspectect anything until after something has already happened. No preventative maintainence...
i've lived here in south jersey all my life, with the exception of being with my ex-wife in philly for 9 of those years.
when i was a kid, it would seem that there were crews out every few months. they'd trim anything that was anywhere near their lines. my grand mother used to go out to them and offer them something to drink when they were near our house. they'd often take a few minutes and chat with her....
in donig this, there was rarely if ever any power outages caused by trees interfering with power lines. THIS is why i get pissed when i see power outages over here. that's usually what's caused them. last year, i was a day without electricity, thanks to hurricane irene. she was 20 miles offshore, and i'm 55 miles inland. how the hell did that kill power in my area?
the year before i was without power for 3 days. a few of us in the neighborhood were sharing our generators with each other to ease the effects. that was in june, and was from heavy rain. the stated reason was falling trees, 'cause they're old. well guess what? if they were TRIMMED, or removed when one of the crews noted that they were old enough to be a possible problem, then it would never have happened.
that's what i was getting at in my original response. i admire the guys that have the balls to climb up those poles, and work near all that voltage. i know you ain't gettin me near that crap. but why did/do the power companies need to skimp on keeping their stuff maintained? they've got the money, and i'm sure there's quite a few qualified people that could use the work.
