Los Angeles is experiencing the worst wildfires in its history due to a lack of rain along with the dry Santa Ana winds gusting as high as 100 mph.

Only the volume of political rhetoric blaming political rivals for this tragedy has grown at anything like the rate of acres burned. Already California’s governor and Los Angeles’ mayor have been identified as culprits.

My experience suggests we need to take a longer view.

In November 1961 the Bel Air fire, a similar though much smaller disaster, occurred in Los Angeles. Over 6,000 acres were burned and nearly 500 homes were destroyed. That fire was also exacerbated by a dry climate and Santa Ana winds.

In the aftermath of that fire Los Angeles initiated a set of safety measures including stringent brush clearing requirements around dwellings and the banning of wood shingles on new construction. The current disaster has demonstrated the inadequacy of those measures.

In those years my wife and I lived in San Diego. In the spring of 1962, we decided to drive up to Los Angeles to see for ourselves what had happened in Bel Air. It was only 130 miles, mostly a pretty drive along the coast, so it was feasible to go up and back in a day.

What we saw in the burned area was eye-opening. The homes that burned were among a series of steep hills separated by narrow canyons. Houses had been built in the bottoms of the canyons and along the ridges. In each of the canyons the houses were on both sides of a road. It was the same along the ridge lines. In the canyons many houses survived. But virtually all the houses along the ridge lines had burned. Brush along the steep canyon walls from the backyards of canyon homes to the tops of the hills was all burned. Apparently hot embers from the sides of canyons were blown by the wind to the other side, and then the fires they started moved rapidly to the top of the next hill.

The property owners and government leaders in the current fire affected neighborhoods all had the opportunity to know about the Bel Air fire and the factors that made it such a disaster.

Of course, the conditions in the areas affected by these contemporary fires are not identical to those of the Bel Air fire. But important features are eerily familiar. Steep hills, dry vegetation, extensive development, little rain, Santa Ana winds; governments, developers and populations eager for rebuilding and more development are among the common features. Stringent governmental regulations on rebuilding and development increase costs. Politicians who propose expensive infrastructure to combat wildfires must raise the capital for them through debt or taxes. Neither is likely to be popular with affected constituencies.

But it doesn’t stop there. Coastal regions in the East face problems that are not so different. Rising sea levels and unpredictable weather patterns are a formula for coastal disasters. On average New Orleans is between 1 and 2 feet below sea level.

But people are constantly choosing to buy, build and live along the coast. Just as for people who elect to live in fire prone areas, what should be the responsibility for those who want to live in these high-risk areas? What knowledge and understanding should they have of the risks associated with their choices? What financial responsibility should they have? How, if at all, should the risks they are taking be underwritten by the rest of us?

I don’t have the answers. And I’m pretty certain I don’t even have all the questions. But a model for a path forward might be found in federal regulation of the U.S. financial sector. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits in U.S. commercial and savings banks. To qualify for deposit insurance, banks must manage risks by following certain liquidity and reserve requirements. More generally, U.S. financial regulation establishes a broad set of standards that deal with risk information asymmetries in financial transactions that involves public interest considerations.

Establishing regulatory practices analogous to the financial sector for fire- and flood-prone communities is worthy of consideration. Eligibility for emergency federal funds might be made conditional on the practice of specified risk reducing and risk management practices. Processes that address risk information asymmetries between community leaders, residents, builders, developers and emergency responders could be another eligibility requirement.

These ideas are only meant as a starting point. But we can be confident rhetorical forays to score political points are not likely to lead to the solutions we all need.

Glen T. Cheney of Bethlehem is a retired manager with Bell Laboratories in Allentown and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.