The short answer, according to industry experts: They had no choice.
For all the quantum advances in technology in the last 50 years, Peco Energy Co. and the nation's other utilities still rely on unsightly cables woven often through dangerously breakable tree limbs and strung atop aging wooden poles.
"If someone had something that was simple and not as intrusive, you would probably have seen it quite some time ago," said Jim Owens of the Edison Electric Group, an industry association in Washington.
It is an infrastructure with roots in the mid-19th century and it looks to survive well into the 21st.
And, experts warn, it will remain vulnerable to storms.
Do not blame Peco, which has a solid national reputation, said John Kelly, executive director of the Perfect Power Institute, an industry group formed after the Northeast blackout of 2003.
This has been a particularly brisk storm period by any measure all across the country. The three storms that knocked out power to Poole and her neighbors are on Peco's top 10 list for total service interruptions in records dating back 55 years. The February 2010 blizzard is right behind at No. 11.
The Philadelphia region, and especially the city's neighboring Pennsylvania counties, has a particular issue: an abundance of storm-vulnerable trees. Peco has an aggressive tree-trimming program, but it has been a source of tension in some neighborhoods.
That tension plays out elsewhere in the nation, Kelly said. He said he knew of instances in which residents have planted trees deliberately in the path of wires to hide them from view. "Some people are trying to defy the utilities," he said.
