California has enlisted the help of Alabama as it seeks to make homes more fire resistant in the wake of this year’s historic wildfires.

According to LAist, Alabama Insurance Commissioner Mark Fowler was in Sacramento last week to testify before California lawmakers about how Alabama has coped with hurricanes.

Citing reporting from Politico, the story talks about measures that California is mulling to cope with the effects of climate change.

The plan would involve the state’s Insurance Department giving out grants to retrofit homes for fire resistance.

Equipping houses with ember-resistant siding, roofs and eaves and removing flammable landscaping could slow the spread of wildfires.

Other proposals would create a home hardening commission to set standards for fire-resistant buildings and offer insurance discounts for those who meet them.

The wildfires, which incinerated more than 12,000 structures, could be one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

But how to pay for it?

California is looking to Alabama’s grant program for wind-proofing roofs for hurricanes, which was approved in 2012.

Fowler said the state had 300 grants available in 2016, but about 200,000 applications.

“We expected hundreds, and it crashed our system,” he said. “The demand was huge. We learned quickly we need to manage expectations. We only have a certain amount of money to put in the program.”

Lara told Politico that Alabama “just so happens to have found a creative way to really be dynamic and prove that this works, and so why reinvent the wheel, and really demonstrate that we’ve been able to remove the politics around climate, to keep that in the state houses, not in the regulatory departments. We’re all in this brotherhood-sisterhood of catastrophes.”

Fowler said Gov. Kay Ivey thought the unlikely collaboration between states was “a great story.” Natural disasters, he said, “don’t care what your politics are.”

“When we first created this program, we had no idea that it was going to become a model. We have seen this culture of resilience move across the country, and it’s been very important to us to do anything we can to help that move forward. We laugh about that sometimes, because we have to explain first why we’re working together,” Fowler said.