In my country, each city has a centralized heating system.
Running hot water is preheated somewhere and sent through the tubes to people’s homes — so if the pipes break down, an entire apartment building or block can be left without any hot water for a while. It’s also turned off deliberately once in a while to test the pipes for leaks and such.
Because of all that, pretty much everyone here is very familiar with sometimes not having hot water and expects it. It *sometimes* happens with cold water too, although far less frequently.
Are hot water outages (and water outages in general) as widespread in America? Have you ever experienced anything like that?