Burying them is often good. In mountainous areas it can be hard/expensive to do.
Paradise, CA is in the Sierra foothills, at almost 4800' altitude. That is higher than some states' highest point. So, yeah, power lines were run above ground.
BUT that was decades ago, probably before I was born. Wildfires wiping out towns are a relatively recent thing. Fire Seasons in CA have been worse the past couple of decades, and it's because Enviros and Envirocrats prevent residents from clearing fire breaks around homes and forbid necessary forest management. The 2003 Old Fire was started by arson, but along with natural phenomena like Santa Ana Winds, one thing that fueled it in the Lake Arrowhead area was dry dead trees area residents wanted to clear out, but Envirocrats forbade it. Well, the fire "cleared" the dead trees instead ... along with homes and other structures.