Gisborne Boys' High students dig deep into cyclone clean-up

A Gisborne high school has re-energised a 35-year-old tradition of helping the community in the wake of natural disasters.

A team of 100 senior students from Gisborne Boys' High School picked up spades and stepped into properties inundated with mud and floodwaters.

The school estimates that for every hour the more than 100-man team digs into the mud, property owners save a week's worth of work.

The big clean-up echoes of the recovery efforts following Cyclone Bola in 1988, GBHS answering the call for help back then.

One student, Carter Orford, is using his dad's spade - the very one he used to clean up the cyclone-stricken community 35 years ago.

Principal and former GBHS student Tom Cairns was part of the post-Cyclone Bola recovery efforts as well.

"We were mucking out houses , we were in vineyards... there were guys picking up carcasses and things off the beach," he said.

Resident Jacquie Paull is grateful that GBHS students - once again - answered the call to action.

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"Without them, we wouldn't be as far through the clean-up as we have been," she said.