Let's do something impressive and bury our exposed power and other utility lines that are a sitting duck for falling trees, tornados, ice and myriad other catastrophes. With a warmer climate storms are becoming more common and increasingly violent. Widespread power outages always seem to occur at the worst possible time: During an average 100 degree heatwave throughout the U.S., or more simply a suburb in the Northeast hit by an icestorm followed by 5 degree weather, all living the citizens of those spots without A/C or Heat at a most unfortunate time.
The German power grid is down an average of 21 minutes per YEAR. The difference is that all of their regular, pedestrian utilities are buried. This from David Frum's article July 2nd, 2012.