Uh-oh . FEMA unprepared for hurricane season.

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The newly appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged in private meetings that with two weeks to go until hurricane season, the agency doesn’t yet have a fully formed disaster-response plan.

David Richardson, who previously served as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security and doesn’t have a background in emergency management, told staff he would share a hurricane plan with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after he completes it late next week. He said Thursday he’s 80% to 85% done with the plan. The agency is already months behind schedule in its preparations for the hurricane season starting June 1, which is expected to have above-normal activity, according to FEMA employees.

Richardson said in a recent meeting with FEMA staff that “clarifying the intent of the president,” who has called for terminating the agency, was a challenge in preparing a strategy for hurricane season, according to a video recording of the meeting viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

He also seemed to express surprise at the vast range of FEMA’s responsibilities, raising concerns among career officials about his ability to run the nation’s disaster-management agency. Richardson, who leads FEMA in an acting capacity, took over the complex agency last week. ...

Richardson has been drafting the plan for hurricane preparedness without the expertise of FEMA staff who are usually responsible for putting it together every year, some of those agency employees said.

Agency staff warned Richardson this week in a document viewed by the Journal that FEMA was ill-prepared for hurricane season. Routine FEMA processes such as assessing current capabilities have “been derailed this year” because of staffing and other issues, the document said. “It has not been normal hurricane season preparedness yet.” ...

The agency hasn’t conducted all the usual hurricane readiness exercises and has provided limited training to staff, despite a new policy that requires every FEMA employee to be deployed to an emergency zone, some agency employees said.

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