Moloka'i's coconut wireless began crackling yesterday with the devastating news that 120 people were being laid off and would have that much less money to spread around a tiny island economy where regular gas costs $4.36 a gallon.

Like hundreds of Moloka'i's roughly 7,500 residents, Shirley Rawlins, of Rawlins' Chevron Service in Kaunakakai, was still trying to process the news late yesterday as it hung over the island like a sense of gloom.

"It's a shock to the whole island," Rawlins said. "Jobs are scarce here. I'm sure it's going to affect the whole island, one way or another."

Moloka'i — an island with no stoplights but plenty of open coastline and calm living — has been through a slew of hard times before and was mostly passed over by Hawai'i's economic prosperity of the past several years.

As the Islands began emerging from the economic doldrums of the 1990s, Moloka'i's unemployment rate continued to run three times the state average. Still, people chose to stay on the Friendly Isle, eking out existences without jobs.

In January, Moloka'i's 7 percent unemployment rate was still more than twice as bad as any other island, except Lana'i's 4 percent rate.

"Oh my gosh, this is just going to push us lower and lower and lower," said Kahana Deknees, who works for Alternatives to Violence — a group that provides assistance for both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. "We're so close and so family-oriented on Moloka'i that I know it's going to affect all of us. Even if I'm not losing my job, it'll affect my family deeply."

The reach of Molokai Ranch runs deeply through Deknees' family.

Her brother is the general manager of the Molokai Lodge, which will be shuttered. Another brother runs the ranch's maintenance department. Two nieces work at the lodge, along with a nephew whose wife is a housekeeper for the ranch's Kaupoa Beach Village.

"What's going to happen to my relatives definitely will affect me," Deknees said.

Deknees was born and raised on Moloka'i and rents a home from Molokai Ranch in Maunaloa. So does her mother. So does one of her brothers.

"And numerous extended 'ohana — uncles, cousins — they're all renting. Our whole town is pretty much Molokai Ranch," Deknees said. "What happens to us?"

Like many Moloka'i families, Deknees saw hers bitterly divided over Molokai Ranch's unsuccessful plans to develop 200 luxury coastal house lots at La'au Point.

Deknees opposed the project, while many in her family who work for the ranch supported it.

"A huge division of the island began with La'au Point," she said. "Finally it was settled. Now, with the big-time closure of Molokai Ranch, I can only expect a backlash, like, 'I told you so. Now look what happened.' It'll even get worse, tension-wise. People will now have lots of time on their hands to be hurtful."

Especially on Moloka'i, hardship for one person touches so many other people, said Janice Kalanihuia, president of 85-employee Molokai General Hospital.

"Here," she said, "the loss of 120 jobs translates to 500 real lives or more. I'm still stunned, but also surprised, and very sad and worried. What will happen to these families? There aren't a lot of opportunities on Moloka'i. Some people have worked on the ranch a long, long time."

Steve Schonely, the owner of Island Kine Auto Rental and Sales, blames Molokai Ranch for its own problems.

"They couldn't get their wishes with La'au Point," he said. "They didn't realize that building million-dollar lots for rich people is not a way to drum up big bucks on Moloka'i. A lot of people see Molokai Ranch as taking, not giving."

Like others, Schonely said, he believes many of the soon-to-be-unemployed Molokai Ranch employees will choose to stay, just like the hundreds of people before them who lost jobs on Moloka'i over the past few decades.

"People on Moloka'i are tough," Schonely said. "They can hunt and they can fish, and they can weather a storm a lot better than most people think. We hunched together after 9/11, and we'll do it again through this."

Shirley Rawlins has seen it before — like when Del Monte devastated Moloka'i's economy with layoffs in the early 1980s before its last pineapple barge sailed away in 1983.

"It seems just like when pineapple was phased out," Rawlins said. "Just like pineapple, Molokai Ranch has been here forever."

Even though their jobs will disappear, most of the Molokai Ranch employees are sure to stay on the island where they were born and raised, Rawlins said.

"They're comfortable with the living here," she said. "No fast food. No traffic. We live real simple, a lot of fishing and hunting. That's the way it is in a small town."