Tony Ling and Tony Labrador sat under the shade of a tarp and grilled oysters over charcoal briquettes Saturday as workers removed several tons of boulders that had been threatening their homes from a hillside in Kalihi Valley.

"It’s kind of scary for the helicopter, too," Labrador said. "It’s kind of windy."

Labrador set up the tarp against a rock wall on Kula Kolea Drive after state workers asked him to evacuate about 6:30 a.m. He planned to camp on the sidewalk until it was safe to return.

In total, 11 homes were evacuated while workers removed the boulders from the hillside above Kula Kolea Place, said William Aila, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

While the evacuation was supposed to last until 4:30 p.m., contractors finished the job by 1 p.m., and state workers began calling residents to let them know they could return.

Pierre Rousseau, regional manager of Janod Inc., the contractor that removed the boulders, said the job was a "walk in the park."

Rousseau and two other workers set out about 7 a.m. and hiked about 400 feet above the homes to the boulders.

The workers drilled metal anchors into the rocks, placed straps around them, and put the rocks in a sling for a helicopter to lift off the hill. The largest boulder was about 11⁄2 tons and made of blue rock, a hard type of stone, Rousseau said.

Just before noon, the helicopter began picking up large boulders and bags of smaller rocks, flying along the ridge line to avoid the homes, and dropping the rocks off in a truck bed in a parking lot off Likelike Highway. In all, the helicopter made 11 trips. Rousseau said the rocks would be taken to a landfill.

He said the wind wasn’t a problem and aided the chopper by providing lift as it blew up the hillside.

He said it was more challenging when he had to remove a large boulder above homes in Niu Valley in September.

No one was hurt when several boulders tumbled down April 12, damaging three homes on Kula Kolea Place. At least seven homes were evacuated that night, but most of the residents since returned.

The day after the rockfall, a state contractor trying to determine who owns the land where the boulders dislodged noticed several more boulders in the same pathway, endangering residents below. The state decided April 20 to remove the boulders and alleviate the immediate danger after one of the landowners told the state she doesn’t have money or insurance to do the work.

Aila said it took several days to get all three landowners, some of whom live on Maui, to sign an agreement allowing the state onto their land. He said the state budgeted $150,000 for the job, but the final cost will likely be less.

Rousseau said the hillside still has boulders, but "the pathway we did is clean."

Ling said his home was damaged by one of the falling boulders. He worried about boulders still on the hillside.

John Maemori, who owns one of the houses that sustained the worst damage from the boulders, stayed home with his roommate during Saturday’s emergency work. Maemori, 38, plans to keep one of the boulders that crashed into his home in the same spot as a time capsule and rebuild the floor over it. He said he wants to stay in the home because it was his dad’s before he died. One of his roommates already moved out.

"Sometimes I can’t sleep at night," he said. "A lot of the neighbors can’t sleep at night. I think I’m the only one that would stay here, and everyone else would want to sell and get out."

While dozens of friends helped him patch the holes in his roof with tarp and plywood, permanent repairs could cost him as much as $60,000.

Maemori’s friends set up a website at www.helpkeoni. com to raise money for the repairs. The website had $2,815 in donations as of Saturday.