AS so often seems to be the case in this type of challenging situation, the gas crisis at Silsden really brought the best out of people.

The response showed that community spirit is well and truly alive and kicking.

‘Ordinary’ people from across the town joined together to support Northern Gas Networks, organisations and agencies as they helped those affected by the crisis.

Whether it was serving food, opening-up their premises, handing out information leaflets or simply calling on someone to make sure they were OK, everybody rallied round.

The gas engineers gave-up their bank holidays and worked tirelessly to help restore the supplies, no mean feat when you consider around 3,500 properties were cut off.

Hats off to everybody involved, a remarkable effort.

Of course, quite rightly, serious questions are now being asked as to how this incident happened in the first place.

Barratt says an investigation is ongoing.

It is essential that lessons are learned from this so that we don’t have any recurrence of the nightmare situation Silsden residents have had to endure.