What if you reform PG&E and those 80% go away. Will the next wildfire that breaks out be 5x bigger now that dry material had more time to accumulate? Should controlled burns be done more often to reduce the impact of inevitable wildfires when they do happen?

> Should controlled burns be done more often to reduce the impact of inevitable wildfires when they do happen?

The forest management servicepeople are starting to wake up to this, although there is a lot of inertia in bureaucracy so reform is slow. But controlled underbrush burns are becoming more common.

Source: father owns a house in Yosemite National Park. We have to take care of our property by mowing/removing virtually all vegetation within 50ft of the house, but there are also controlled burns semi-regularly in our community performed by USFS.

> although there is a lot of inertia in bureaucracy so reform is slow.

It's also a lack of money. People are notorious for always questioning why the forest service gets money.

Most of the land that burned in the Camp Fire last year (the infamous one that burned through a town and killed 80 people had burned just a few years before; much of the rest was manicured grasslands and woodlands within the town. Newly burned/cleared land grows back quickly with grass and brush that actually poses more of a fire hazard than a dense forest.

I'm guessing that there are probably better ways to manage fire risk than to wait for some random power lines to overheat.

For example, if you do a controlled burn you can pick the day with the best weather conditions and have trained responders ready to deal with any problems. If a random power line overheats, you only know about it when half the state is on fire.

Its because they are out there. If they are doing 80% of the activity in the wild, that number is expected.

And as other point out, its inevitable a fire will start. Solutions are not delaying, since that makes them worse. Its controlled burns.