A pub with no gas: Lithgow residents rely on each other after flooding ruptures pipeline

Head chef of the 7 Valleys pub, Daniel Amador, with an improvised street kitchen in Lithgow, NSW. The town is expected to be without mains gas for up to a month. Photograph: Sarah Michell/The Guardian

Residents of Lithgow are using kettles to prepare water for bathing and restaurants with bottled gas are cooking warm meals for locals, as the regional New South Wales town waits up to a month for a broken gas pipeline to be repaired.

Locals in towns including Lithgow, Bathurst, Wallerawang and Oberon woke up on Thursday to find their homes had been cut off from natural gas – the result of a leak in the pipeline between Young and Lithgow. More than 20,000 people are affected.