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When Carl Helvie, 75, of Hampton, Va., found himself in a moldy home without electricity for 10 hot August days following Hurricane Isabel in 2003, it didn’t take much to make him happy.

“A friend got through and brought me ice, and it was so good to have cold water to drink,” Helvie says. “It certainly did not seem a luxury item under the circumstances.”

But should you find yourself in the aftermath of a disaster, luxury is exactly what FEMA will consider ice to be. “We’re not in the ice business anymore,” FEMA director R. David Paulison told U.S. senators recently. Ice is not a necessity for most disaster victims, he said.

FEMA will provide ice if it is medically necessary, officials say, but otherwise residents are expected to have their own emergency supplies on hand.

The decision stands in sharp contrast to FEMA’s Hurricane Katrina response in 2005, when the agency purchased nearly 225 million pounds of ice, one-third of which was ultimately disposed of after two years in storage. The debacle cost FEMA a cool $70 million and brought strong criticism from some senators.

While limiting ice may be a good cost-cutting measure, other disaster response officials aren’t ready to proclaim a blanket policy like FEMA’s. “For the general public, we believe that ice is a luxury. But does it make people more comfortable? Yes,” says Jonathan Lord, assistant director for emergency management and homeland security in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. “Whether FEMA does it or not, we’ll provide whatever we need to for our residents.”