Man saves his mother’s burning house — with soup

Sometimes you just have to work with what you've got.

For one man in Hawaii, that meant dousing a fast-moving house fire with miso soup.

Around 5 a.m. Saturday morning, 41-year-old Reuben Prensky woke up at his mother's house on Hawaii Island to the sounds of crackling.

He found a plastic sink in the laundry area on fire. Flames were already reaching the roof.

Prensky ran into the kitchen for some water, but opted for a pot of leftover miso soup instead. He quickly doused the quickly spreading fire with the broth, buying himself enough time to grab the garden hose and put out the fire for good.

By the time firefighters arrived, the fire was out — and little cubed vegetables were scattered on the floor.

Officials credited Prenksy's "quick thinking" with reducing a potential $200,000 in property damages to just $10,000.

"Everybody agrees, if that fire had gone on for about 30 more seconds, it would have burned the whole house down," Prensky's mother, 70-year-old Joy Gardner, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Prensky was visiting from Canada and had arrived only two days earlier. Gardner was sleeping upstairs at the time of the fire.

"I'm very, very grateful," said Gardner. "He saved the house, he saved the day, he might have even saved my life."