Engineers have begun reconnecting gas supplies to thousands of homes after a failure in the network.
Around 8,000 properties in the Falkirk area were affected by the problem, which began hitting households on Sunday.
Gas network company SGN previously suggested it could be Friday or even into the weekend before supplies were restored to everyone.
By Monday night, supplies were restored to 3,000 homes across areas including Bainsford, Carron, Carronshore, Larbert, Langlees, New Carron Village, Skinflats and Stenhousemuir.
READ MORE: Thousands without gas on coldest night of winter so far
The company praised the “incredible efforts from our engineers over the past 36 hours”, and said in a statement: “We’ll visit as many properties as we can before it gets too late tonight, before restarting work first thing in the morning.
“Our engineers will be revisiting each affected property to reconnect your gas supply, which involves carrying out safety checks.
“It’s important you don’t try to turn on your gas supply yourself.
“We have more than 8,000 properties to visit and it will take us a couple of days to reach everyone.
“We’re prioritising those most vulnerable members of the community first but we’ll be making every effort to get gas back on to everyone’s homes as soon as possible.”
A fault in a piece of equipment that regulates pressure in the gas network was to blame, according to SGN.
Fourteen schools, nurseries and education facilities in the area were closed on Monday due to the issue.
SGN set up an information point at Camelon Community Centre with electric hotplates and heaters made available for vulnerable residents, older people and those with young children.
The centre closed at 10pm on Monday, with a view of reopening at 8.30am on Tuesday.
The company added: “We’re still providing electric hotplates and heaters for people with young children, a disability, a long-term mental or physical condition or who are a bit older.
“The electricity network company SP Energy Networks is monitoring the increased electricity demand in the area and is advising residents to be mindful of how you’re using electricity over the next few days – heat the rooms you’re using, wrap up warm and don’t have your devices turned on at once.
“Please remember to always check the ID of anyone calling at your home. All our engineers carry photo ID badges, as do other official organisations.”
Local businesses were also feeling the impact at the beginning of the week.
The Malcolm Allan butchers in Larbert had to stop production at the bakery where it makes steak pies after losing its gas supply on Monday morning.
Speaking at midday, director Gordon Allan said: “We have two factories, one is a bakery and one is a sausage factory.
“The bakery is effectively shut down from two hours ago, I’ve got staff in limbo.
“We’ve staff to pay and we’re not producing, it’s not looking good at all.
“The sausage factory will still produce because we have electric cookers so it can keep going but we can’t keep the bakery going.
“It’s a major incident, we don’t know when it will be sorted and this is a busy time of year for us because we do lots of steak pies for new year.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here