An Oak Harbor family escaped safely after a fire ripped through a bedroom at their home at Northeast Third Avenue early Thursday morning.

A woman was asleep in her bedroom when she noticed the light change in her room. She awoke to a fire burning behind her headboard, said Oak Harbor Fire Chief Ray Merrill.

The woman called her husband, who rushed in with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. The couple and their daughter escaped.

Firefighters arrived and ensured the flames were extinguished. Merrill said the fire was caused by a portable heater plugged into an extension cord. That caught the carpet on fire, which in turn ignited the bedroom drapes.

“It was relatively minor but it could have been very bad,” he said.

Navy Region Northwest Fire assisted.