“I’m not an economist, so I don’t want to sort of say to you it’s going to be all fine. It’s not going to be all fine,” Mr. Mapp said. 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. But beyond that, he offered no guarantees. His priority, he said, was making sure critically ill patients got out of the two damaged hospitals.

He asked that Washington remember “the forgotten Americans” in the territories. “We are no different than Americans anywhere else,” he said.

Tourism is not only the livelihood for many Virgin Islanders, it provides a third of the local gross domestic product — a revenue stream the local government cannot afford to live without.

A vicious cycle of financial mismanagement, combined with other factors like the loss of one-tenth of the islands’ population since 2008, were hampering the Virgin Islands even as the rest of the country bounced back from the Great Recession.

Basic government functions have suffered neglect for years. The government has shortchanged the hospitals of the funding they are supposed to receive. And that has caused the hospitals to fall behind on payments to entities like the local water and power authority, which has raised rates so high on customers that they pay three times as much as the average in the states. Compounding the financial stress, the federal government caps the amount of money it provides the territories for Medicaid.

“I’m so at a loss right now and really trying to hold it together 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. Ms. Plaskett, like other territorial delegates, cannot vote.

After Irma hit three weeks ago, aid was slow to trickle into St. Thomas and St. John. When military, law enforcement and emergency medical workers finally did begin to settle in, they were forced to pull out as Maria approached, taking the semblance of safety and order they brought with them.