hot water heater headaches....

ok, so....we got home from the swim meet to find that there was not hot water......not for bathes or showers....and the conundrum appliance did reset when prompted...but we have no idea what shorted out the system......gentle readers.....we have a hot water heater curse here on the lake....and the last one burst into flames sometime int he night a few years ago....and were it not for the smoke alarms we would have been history.....and so we got out the matches to check out the smoke alarms just in case........