As someone who can see the Dixie fire column daily, had family evac’d by the Bear fire last year (basically burned 100K+ acre area just SW of the Dixie), and lives 10 minutes from Paradise (the town mentioned in the article), most of the PGE right-of-ways do look like freeways now through the forest, little to no under story growth. I believe they’re limited to how far out they can go due to easements.

To add, basically the last 4 years has been the burnout of a huge swath of forest in this area between the Camp fire, Bear fire, and now the Dixie fire, not to mention the many “small” fires that were caught/didn’t get established. The majority of land between highway 32 to the La Porte/Quincy highway has burned. Don’t have a good estimate since I’m on my phone, but 100s of square miles of mostly back country forest. Both the Camp and Bear fires made 10-15 mile runs in one day, and Dixie’s put up massive pyrocumulonimbus pretty much every day this week.

Edit to add: it’s also been incredibly dry, most of June-July has been upper 90s-low 100s, with a few 110+ periods. Humidity has also been extremely low, in the afternoons 8-12%. Even overnight it only recovers up to 40-45%. Higher elevations are cooler, but not so much that it mitigates, so the forest is pretty tinderbox right now. Once it’s lit it’s hard to put out.