As wildfire season approaches, communities across the country are looking for ways to prevent fires from ever starting.
Causes like lightning are outside of our control, but electricity is still flowing through wildfire country in the form of thousands of miles of power lines.
In fact, utility power lines are either a suspected or determined cause in several high-profile deadly wildfires in the last ten years. Officials said power lines were the cause of the devastating Camp Fire that tore through Paradise, California in 2018. Power lines are also suspected of starting some of the deadly wildfires that went through Oregon in 2020.
“We don’t want to be the cause of the fire and we also want to do anything that we can to reduce overall wildfire risk,” said Jona Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power.