A hand grips a faucet handle in this undated photo. A viral post Friday on a Facebook page popular with soldiers claimed that a temporary shutoff of hot water at Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, was due to the U.S. federal government shutdown. Local officials said the actual cause was a commercial power grid outage. (Christopher Johns/U.S. Marine Corps)

VILSECK, Germany — A recent social media post claiming that the hot water halt at a U.S. Army base in this Bavarian city was all wet when it came to the real culprit, according to a garrison official.

Friday’s shutoff in living quarters at Rose Barracks and another building on base was caused by a local power outage, U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria civilian spokesperson Andreas Kreuzer said Monday in response to questions.

That contradicted a post made the same night on the popular U.S. Army WTF Moments Instagram and Facebook pages featuring a screenshot of a chat message claiming that the incident was “because of (the) government shutdown.”

U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria said Saturday morning on Facebook that “all issues with the hot water supply at Rose Barracks were fixed (Friday).” The post urged residents to report any additional problems.

A similar issue at the Hohenfels Training Area on Sunday morning affected four buildings and was resolved within five hours of being reported, Kreuzer said.

Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, is seen Aug. 29, 2023. A viral post Friday on a popular Army-related social media channel said a hot water outage there was caused by the U.S. federal government shutdown, but a U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria spokesperson said Monday that a local power failure was to blame. (Michael Slavin/Stars and Stripes)

Both incidents were unrelated to the government shutdown, he added.

The WTF Moments post, which had no listed source, quickly drew thousands of likes and comments on both platforms.

The channel, moderated by several Army veterans, has a history of using its large platform to highlight various aspects of military life, including addressing issues related to soldiers’ quality of life, misconduct and leadership.

Kreuzer didn’t comment on questions about who sent the message in the post or why the outage was initially linked to the ongoing impasse in Washington, D.C.

“Garrison services related to life, health and safety are not affected by the shutdown,” he said.