I've spent a big chunk of my flying career looking up at powerlines, or flying under them. Definitely no laughing matter; powerlines figure in my nightmares. Every once in a while there's an image on the news of a Cessna hanging in high tension lines somewhere, but more often, when someone contacts powerlines, the airplane doesn't fare well.
These two got very lucky.
I haven't hit a line to date, but I've been behind or alongside those who did; I've watched it happen, picked up the pieces, and repaired airplanes that hit powerlines, and have flown alongside them looking for damage as we flew back to the airport, with the other guy trailing a lot of wire, missing wingtips, leading edges, canopies, and so on.
One of the funniest stories I ever heard told was an inspector in a FSDO, a former spray pilot, who had a blow-by-blow account of his super cub folding up around him after he caught a wire, eventually ending up strapped to a seat in a field, with little else around him. Another involved a friend who lost his teeth doing a face plant into the panel when spraying a field. I was behind a guy who stayed airborne after cutting four lines, about 35 years ago. There was a lot of damage, but he kept spraying until his retirement. His account wasn't funny, but it made a great story, and I still use his example as an object lesson, sometimes.
Guy wires on towers are spookier than powerlines. Those will end your day.