NSW gas outage forces Lithgow hospital to postpone surgeries over lack of hot water

The Lithgow hospital’s emergency department is open but officials say some surgeries will be postponed because of the gas outage affecting parts of NSW. Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAP

A major gas outage affecting parts of New South Wales’s central west has forced Lithgow hospital into postponing a raft of scheduled patient surgeries, as locals wait up to a month for a broken gas pipeline to be repaired.

Lithgow and its emergency department remain open, however the facility’s reliance on natural gas to power its hot water services has resulted in some “non-urgent” procedures being delayed, despite urgent attempts for alternative heating methods and temporary gas supplies to be trucked in, a state health official confirmed.