An incident on South Hill Saturday afternoon forced a number of residents and businesses to evacuate and caused a busy few hours for the Moose Jaw Police Service, Fire Department, and Sask Energy.

Shortly after noon on Saturday, emergency crews attended the scene of a major gas leak on the 700 block of Lillooet Street West.

Fire Chief Rod Montgomery applauded the hard work of all involved.

"Good job by our crews identifying the area that they had to evacuate in conjunction with the police, Moose Jaw Fire, Sask Power, Sask Energy, all the partners there. It just goes to show how teamwork can get things done. Hats off to everybody involved, SaskEnergy was able to isolate the gas line and get it shut down."

The issue first became apparent just after noon and was resolved shortly before 3 pm. Montgomery says there were a few fortunate factors that contributed to the quick fix.

"It's not a high residential area with the ball diamonds and football field. Its natural gas too and that helps in some regards in that it dissipates in the air. We had a slight breeze which was favourable as well. Very fortunate that no one got injured in the whole ordeal, and that's the main thing, that no one got hurt."

It is believed that the leak was caused by an excavator working in the area.