Thousands of people could be without heating for days in central Scotland due a gas mains failure as the coldest weather of the winter hits.
Eight thousand properties have been affected in the Falkirk area, with Gas infrastructure company SGN saying it will now have to go door-to-door to turn off supplies in each property for safety reasons.
Temperatures in and are expected to remain low over the coming days.
Falkirk Council said schools will have to close on Monday and it would be working with SGN to care for vulnerable people affected.
St Mungo's High School and Larbet High School will be closed, along with nine primary schools and three other learning facilities.
SGN said it would provide electric heaters and cookers for the elderly, disabled, chronically sick and those with young children - and would be available from Camelon Community Centre.
In a statement, the company said a fault in a piece of equipment that regulates pressure in the gas network was to blame.
"While we repair the gas governor, we need to visit all affected properties to turn off your gas supply at the meter and we'll need access to your home to turn off your gas supply," SGN said.
It will take us some days to reach everyone so if you do need to pop out or go to work, it would be helpful for us if you're able to leave a key with a neighbour.
"With so many homes affected, it's likely you could be without your gas supply for several days. We're sorry for the inconvenience this will cause. We're doing all we can to restore gas supplies to the area as soon as possible."
Falkirk Council said they had alerted housing and social work services to be on stand by to support SGN and was contacting head teachers to let parents know this evening about what schools may be affected.
"We have a list of vulnerable people in the area so we know were people who may have the most difficulty are," a spokesman said.
He said schools could potentially close if the buildings are very cold, though all care homes in affected areas are currently fine.
"We are ready to support SGN in any way we can," he said.
Homes in Carronshore, Larbert, Skinflats and Stenhousemuir were hit on Sunday morning by the gas failure.
Some social media users claim they have been without gas from at least 6.30am as temperatures dropped well below freezing across the country.
The Met Office stated the ice-cold conditions hit minus four degrees in Falkirk yesterday morning.
Angry social media users expressed their frustration.
One said: "Frankly, it's pretty poor the gas being off since at least 6.30am."
A Twitter user continued: "Well as usual in a crisis the information provided is lacking and conflicting."
Another called for the information to be shared as "the elderly may not have Internet or anyone to rely on for information, employed carers might not know what is going on either" adding "it's terrible to think they may be alone and freezing cold with no info."
Scott McLean, 42, who lives in Larbert, was one of those at Camelon Community Centre to pick up supplies.
He said he was awoken at 4am by his boiler "vibrating and going crazy".
He said: "I'd been out for a Christmas night out and got to bed at two in the morning. So at 4am in the morning I was having a drunken conversation with my dog about what to do about the problem, but he didn't have any ideas, so I just switched the boiler off and went back to bed.
"We have a WhatsApp group with my neighbours and people started saying they had the same problem and I knew then it wasn't just my boiler on the blink."
Mr McLean's three children will not be able to attend school on Monday due to the closures.
"We'll have to work out what we can cook in the microwave, and now with this hotplate, so we'll rustle meals together and get plenty of duvets down in the living room and have plenty of movies for the kids," he said.
"It's all of us coming together. Everybody is clubbing together to get the street through it."
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen hit a brutal minus four on the coldest night of the year so far.
Temperatures dipped across the country last night with Tyndrum near Stirling recording a reading of -9ºC.
Tulloch Bridge in Fort William was the coldest part of the country last night, reaching a arctic -9.6ºC.
