Two college students escaped injury last night when a boulder the size of a trash can crashed through their rented home in Palolo Valley. The rockfall occurred in nearly the same area where a 500-pound boulder hit a home two years ago, officials said.

The boulder last night rolled down a steep hillside, slammed into the back of the single-wall home, rolled halfway through an unoccupied bedroom, fell through a wooden floor and ended up in a crawlspace under the building. No one was hurt, the Honolulu Fire Department said.

The accident occurred shortly before 5 p.m. in the 2000 block of 10th Avenue, a few houses away from the March 2006 rockslide.

Last night, two people were in the home when the boulder struck but were in a different part of the house. On the advice of police and other emergency officials, they decided to not stay in the home last night, neighbors said.

Nearby residents were taking the incident in stride.

"It's just part of living on a hillside," said Tom Lam, who lives in the house immediately below the damaged one. "There's not much you can do about it. There's probably more danger from the cars driving by on the street below."

The boulder apparently broke away from the hillside above the homes and left a visible trail through vegetation as it rolled down the slope. Lam said he saw a group of youngsters hiking in the hillside area when he left for work yesterday morning.

The boulder's impact knocked out a 3-by-10-foot section of the home's rear wall and left a large hole in the bedroom's wooden floor. Broken glass and splintered wood lay scattered about the bedroom.

City and state officials who examined the home last night said it appeared that the rock originated from private, rather than state, property.

In March 2006, during a prolonged rainy spell, a boulder crashed into a Palolo home in the same area. That boulder also fell from private property. Three men who rented the house were home but not injured.

The area of last night's rockslide is on the east side of Palolo Valley, on the opposite side of where the state public housing authority recently kicked off a long-delayed $500,000 rockfall mitigation project above Palolo Homes.

In January, a state-hired consultant began surveying the hillside above the public housing area, which has had several close calls with boulders over the past several years.

Possible remedies include constructing a fence behind apartments abutting the hillside, putting in a moat to catch falling rocks, or manually removing boulders that pose a threat.

Construction is expected to be done by the end of year.