I live in a rural area where the power goes out even when it thunderstorms too hard. Our state's power conglomerate doesn't actually handle trees. They leave it up to Department of Transportation. So when trees fall and stuff, they have to call DOT to come get it before repairing the lines. The lines have to follow roads because of property laws and stuff. The DOT doesn't prune the trees even annually, it's something they do ever few years. They mow more often and even that's only really around highways. If you have a tree at the end of your yard and it's threatening power lines, it's up to you as a private citizen to take care of it. Trees are basically this hot potato nobody wants to deal with until it's too late. Forcing the power monopoly to do it would be socialism I guess. Or they would just turn around and jack up prices to compensate for it. That's the problem when private companies run your infrastructure, they want to keep costs and workforce as lean as possible. And the DOT has to keep its budget low because increasing taxes on the wealthy of my state would be bad for some reason. I guess they'd leave for the next cheapest state.