Florida Forest Service Director Jim Karels made CFO Jimmy Patronis sick to his stomach in less than 12 minutes.

That’s how long Karels’ Hurricane Michael update to Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Cabinet took Tuesday. It foreshadowed what may be the worst forest fire season North Florida has ever seen.

Karels' warning of what could become a long and especially hot spring and summer included brief reference to how a clogged Chipola River and Econfina Creek contribute to the fire challenge with flooded roads and plains.

The southern pine beetle – the most destructive predator of pine trees – is attracted by the wet conditions. It damages trees in some of Florida’s most densely forested land, adding more fuel to the fires.

Karel described an 80-mile swath of Florida left looking like a box of wooden matches turned upside down and strewn in every direction. The forest oaks and commercial pines have formed a tangled web that increases the danger in the sawing and cutting of trees and limbs.

'PANIC LEVEL':

That is, once the workers have navigated past blocked and or flooded roads.

Department of Environmental Protection officials compared the downed trees in the Chipola to an iceberg – what is visible is just a fraction of what lies below the surface. The clogged waterways flood roads and plains, adding to the mess left by Michael.

Meanwhile the fallen trees deteriorate in the woods into “gas-straw timber.”

“If we don’t get a break in there, if we don’t start to remove the debris, we’re going to see catastrophic fires,” said Karels. He said in some areas it may take as long as half a day just to reach a wildfire that once would have taken two hours to bring under control.

Tree debris is estimated to be as much as 120 tons per acre with North Florida peak fire season about to begin in April.

“California does not have this kind of fire threat,” added Karels. “Three weeks without rain and a windy day, and its ready to go, that quick . . . You could see fires that run tens of millions of dollars.”

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There are 233 communities between Port. St. Joe and the Georgia border that are under a potential fire threat. Although forest workers have cleared more than 720 miles of roads and fire lines so far, Karels said that is just a “small, small portion” of what is needed.

Much of the debris, more than 80 percent, is on privately owned land where the landowners can’t pay for the cleanup. A generation of commercial timber – expected to reap as much as $1,500 an acre – has been laid to waste.

Also wiped out were crops of peanuts, cotton, and nursery plants.

Karels estimates a fleet of more than 2.5 million logging trucks is needed to haul what he called gas-straw timber out of the woods.

“I got nauseous to know that we got ten times the amount of fuel that we normally have on the ground,” said Patronis, who placed the hurricane update on the Cabinet agenda.

He fears the rest of the state has moved on from the storm that struck five months ago.

“I drive Highway 20 several times every week and I see the destruction,” said Patronis. “I know that people who live in Tampa, who live in Orlando, or Jacksonville or Miami don’t see what I see.”

Florida has spent more than $1 billion so far on the cleanup.

Additional money will flow from Washington. President Donald Trump announced Friday the federal government will pick up 100 percent of debris removal and emergency protective measures for a 45-day period, of the state choice.

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But meanwhile, North Florida’s peak fire season is April and May and there is as much as 72 million tons of tree debris lying in the sun.

“We have a severe fire threat in Northwest Florida that is a direct remnant of Hurricane Michael,” said Patronis. “It’s a tangled weave of downed trees and it is not easy to access all that fiber on the million of acres of privately held lands.”

North Florida lawmakers want the Legislature to dip into the state reserves to free up more money for the cleanup.

“We got to have more state money,” said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee. “We’ve got $3 billion dollars in the rainy-day account and it’s raining, so let’s dip into that.”

Writer James Call can be contacted at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee