yeah, I don’t really have the expertise to know. I thought flooding was an issue for buried lines? but I guess houston is no new orleans…
The good thing about above ground lines is they’re comparatively really easy to work on and repair. But that doesn’t help if like 100s or thousands of them are knocked out in one swoop I guess
It also might be way different if the main issue is HV transmission lines vs local service lines.
With the May power outages (I think about 800-900k) it was a mixture: one area did have damage to the main HV lines from a tornado, which is why they took so long to get power to that region I think. But most people its just the local service lines that were the issue. I haven’t heard anything about damage to main HV lines this time, but I haven’t done an exhaustive search either.