On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, some 30,000 wooden poles and 1,000 steel pylons were destroyed in 96 hours. Safety tolerances previously considered conservative turned out to be woefully inadequate. We got twice as much ice, something you see once in a millennium. Nobody could have predicted that. But while the cost of burying all high-tension wires in the region underground is still believed to be prohibitive, officials are beginning to talk about other measures.
Technological fixes are another possibility.
In the past, such proposals were considered too expensive.