WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR)– House lawmakers Thursday debated whether regulations contributed to the wildfires that devastated the LA area. 

Republicans labeled the committee’s hearing the “Consequences of Overregulation,” saying Congress has to look back at what went wrong. 

However, Democrats, like Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) pushed back on claims that regulations made wildfires worse. 

“Shame on anyone who is exploiting the pain and suffering of disaster victims,” Lieu said. 

Lieu says firefighters tell him conditions, like low humidity and 100 mile per hour winds, were to blame.

“None of the firefighters said it was about overregulation,” Lieu said. 

Lieu called out President Donald Trump’s order for the Army Corps of Engineers to release nearly two billion gallons of water, something the president touted Thursday morning.

“I opened it up and it’s pouring down and it’s a beautiful thing,” President Trump said. 

Lieu says farmers need that water for the summer, and it never made it to LA. 

“The president wasted all this water… for a PR stunt,” Lieu said. 

Some lawmakers say both the conditions and policies are to blame. 

“We have two truisms,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said. 

Issa recalled a local mayor who said a fire-prone area that caught fire hadn’t had a prescribed burn in 30 years. 

“Why wasn’t it cleared? He said ‘We can’t get the authority’,” Issa said. 

Steven Greenhut with the conservative R Street Institute blames state and federal environmental regulations, calling them a “huge hurdle for everything.”

“We’re supposed to do about, according to CalFire, about a million acres of clearance a year, and have been doing around 125,000,” Greenhut said. 

Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Institute Director at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Frank Frievalt, says lawmakers need to reframe how they approach the issue. 

Frievalt says the first step is making communities near fire-prone areas more resilient.

“We must, as fast as possible, deal with the ignitability of the structures in these fire dependent landscapes,” Frievalt said.