In recent months, we've seen challenges that could limit FEMA's ability to lead: reduced grant funding, constrained hiring authorities, and administrative delays that slow or sideline responses.

The threat of heavy rain is “slight” for this weekend, but with the ground fully saturated in Kerr County even small amounts of rainfall could cause flooding.

David Richardson, the agency’s acting administrator, has not been to the site of one of the nation’s deadliest floods in the U.S. in the past 25 years, upending a long practice of FEMA leaders making...