I have never seen them wait for a pole fuse. However, when the house down the street from me was on fire, I did notice they shut everything off at the meter. This is in line with the new ruling that says the solar shutdown switch has to be accessible. Firefighters will still have to be trained on how to deal with situations where hot electrical lines are present, but the result will be that they can't or won't do some things that they would otherwise do. They will have fewer options to aggressivly fight the fire.
BTW: I am retired from the computer industry and have nothing to do with firefighters, the NEC or equipment manufacturers. Furthermore, I believe the government usually makes things worse when they try to regulate them. However, like I said before, it seems to me that the NEC is doing a reasonable job. I suspect that the fact that the NEC is part of a private trade organization has a lot to do with this. The NEC writes guidelines and municipalities decide to adopt them as requirements (or not). It keeps the NEC an arms length away from the politicians. (Can you imagine the mess it would be if politicians were writing the rules for electrical code?)
