In the Virgin Islands, Hurricane Maria Drowned What Irma Didn’t Destroy<br />“We believe there is a large chance they will default,” said David Hitchcock, an analyst with Standard & Poor’s, which has said it plans to withdraw its ratings of the Virgin Islands — already at a level considered junk by investors — by October<br />because the government has stopped providing it with basic information on its cash flow and financial outlook.<br />And it’s like that — when you get out of the car and you’re trying to figure out what’s happening.”<br />The governor, Kenneth E. Mapp, said he expects that the hospitals on St. Thomas<br />and St. Croix, the most populated islands, will have to be torn down and rebuilt.<br />The government — the territory’s largest employer — had been able to pay its employees since the hurricanes and would do so again this week, he said.<br />The 103,000 people who live in these islands are at the end of a long supply chain of relief<br />that depends heavily on the ports in neighboring Puerto Rico — now crippled by Maria and unable to meet the needs of its own people.<br />“I’m so at a loss right now and really trying to hold it together<br />because we were on the brink before this, in terms of our finances,” Representative Stacey Plaskett, the Virgin Islands delegate to Congress, said in an interview.<br />Governor Mapp said in an interview this week that the territory had already made its bond payment due next month<br />and was not in danger of default or bankruptcy, which would have to be authorized by Congress, similar to what happened with Puerto Rico.
