As the tumultuous hurricane season comes to a close, Beaufort County Emergency Management Director William Winn said he's come to a realization this year: "It's not up to the government; it's up to us," he told the Sea Island Rotary Club on Tuesday.

Winn said he was amazed by the reaction to the disastrous Gulf Coast hurricanes and realized that emergency management is a cooperation of not only government, but also the public, business and media. The communities with the strongest cohesiveness and will to rebuild, instead of the ones that rely on government assistance, bounce back the fastest, he said.

As emergency management director, Winn said he'll continue to foster community cooperation.

Today the county launches a catastrophic re-entry task force, which will work on plans to restore the area after a disaster and inform evacuated residents of the progress, such as setting up toll-free numbers for them to call, he said.

Naval Hospital Beaufort recently has joined other military bases in being interconnected to Beaufort County's command-and-control center, Winn said.

As for an evacuation plan, he said, he feels comfortable with the county's blueprint, which has been tested and tweaked since the evacuation for Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

"We have the plan, the plan works and we're ready to do it again," Winn said.

However, Winn warned, the S.C. Emergency Management Division continues to be woefully underfunded, which has forced some satellite communications to be shut off and has led to high staff turnover in the division.

Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency can't set up services to aid the thousands of Gulf Coast evacuees scattered throughout the country, the state agency has shifted money to set up assistance centers in Beaufort, Columbia, Charleston and Greenville until FEMA can provide reimbursement.

At the moment, none of the centers have phone service but should have toll-free numbers in the next few days.

"We had to set up an infrastructure that's never existed before," said John Legare, spokesman for the state Emergency Management Division.

The centers opened at 1 p.m. Monday and will remain open the next 90 days, helping evacuees decide whether to stay or go home, and they will also provide social services, Legare said.

The Beaufort center is at 873 B Robert Smalls Parkway and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.