I recognize you don't like the article either - the author should be ashamed to have their name attached to it.

After the storm I followed the transmission lines out in our neighborhood. I’m a retired electrician. I saw a tree which almost covered the transformer and wrapped around the drop to some houses. I did report it to city hall in person.

A day after we got power back a high voltage line dropped because it arced to a tree. Luckily they were still working in our area and had it fixed in a few hours. They did trim back that tree.

yet again), and I was somewhat taken aback from the sheer number of trees, which a DUer did say that TX has a lot of trees. I always thought TX was mostly plains, no trees, etc. (I was wrong of course about that).

In Missouri, where we do have lots of trees (e.g., the Mark Twain Forest), lots of rivers running through the state, thus we have trees galore, they have taken a somewhat aggressive steps to trim tree foliage back from power poles and power infrastructure, all supposedly to reduce the number of outages due to tree debris against power poles etc. Also, we do have the occasional ice storms that hammer the state too. Of course, other steps can be taken such as metal poles vs. wood poles, in some areas put lines underground, etc.

Sure, they can't eliminate all of them at once (those trees whose limbs possibly could interfere w/ the power), but one must start somewhere. Perhaps in TX they can start and then continue the process as an ongoing process. Funny that the powers that be don't want to spend any more money than absolutely needed (so they can put more money in their pockets instead), but if one is not delivering power to customers, then no money is coming in for those days power is off.

tornadoes in hurricanes, hopping around indiscriminately in a swath of destruction. Main trees that fell in my cul-de-sac were huge 99 ft pines and some oaks, while my little bench pillows in front didn't budge. It was weird, scary, unexpected of a Cat 1 storm miles inland. Last hurricane to uproot 2 pines in my neighborhood was Ike in 2008, but this was worse. Trees down on houses, cars, power poles, transformers. Someone needs to do a true article of us and neighborhoods that pulled together and then celebrated when power came on after 8 days. We're tired but grateful.

the companies might be forced to actually do the maintenance work needed - trimming trees, underground wires at least for high-risk areas like nursing homes etc. Instead, the focus is on profit for the owners. This is always where Abbott comes down. And republicans in Texas are on my last nerve - they complain, put in generators if they can afford it personally, and keep voting for a guy who cares only about himself and money.