Moves Afoot to Bury Power Lines Underground TAMPA (WUSF) - When Hurricane Wilma hit the state last October, the fast moving storm knocked down between seven and 10 thousand power poles, leaving more than three million residents in the dark. Some waited for weeks to have service restored.

Rep. Julio Robaina of Miami is pushing to have overhead power lines buried underground.

ROBAINA: We keep putting it back up in the air with the pole, watching it come right back down again the following year, a lot of times the same lengths of cable. Unless we bury the networks within the next 10 or 15 years, there's not gonna be a solution to this.

But utility companies are warning it would cost as much as $80 billion to bury the lines and, Geisha Williams of Florida Power and Light says it still would not guarantee that the lines would be protected.

WILLIAMS: It's not a panacea. There will be outages regardless of whether it's overhead or underground. I've often said that there's no such thing as "hurricane proof."

And the power companies say when underground equipment is damaged, it can take even longer to repair.
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