CENTER TWP — Three tenants were forced out of their homes early this morning when fire broke out in a Route 8 building that houses apartments and two small businesses.

No one was hurt in the fire about 3:50 a.m. Investigators suspect the fire started in or around a wall heater.

Jesse Bouchard was sleeping in his upstairs apartment when he heard pounding on his door and yelling coming from outside.

The 35-year-old Bouchard, a pharmacy technician, has lived there three years.

“I woke up and everything seemed normal,” he said. “I didn’t see any smoke or anything.”

But when he peered out his door he saw two women waving their arms. He described them as looking “panicked.”

The women, whose names were not available, operate a massage therapy shop in one of two office spaces below Bouchard’s apartment. They also live there.

But because the women, both Chinese, don’t speak English, he did not immediately know what was happening until he went outside — dressed in a coat that covered his sleeping clothes.

The women led him into their apartment and business, where he found smoke coming from the bathroom.

Bouchard called 911 and then the building’s maintenance man. He went back into his apartment but still didn’t see any evidence of fire there. He returned to the women’s apartment.

“When I looked into the bathroom again,” he said, “I saw flames coming out of the heater in the wall.”

Chief Nathan Wulff of the Unionville Volunteer Fire Department arrived a short time later.

“I saw smoke coming out of the eaves all the way around the building,” Wulff said. He went into the women’s apartment.

“There was a small fire coming out of the (electric) wall heater,” he said.

Wulff shut the door to stop the fire from spreading and waited for the engine crew. The fire was quickly put out.

A thermal-imaging camera was used and showed the fire had gotten into the wall but did not extend out of the bathroom.

A damage estimate was not available.

Judy Precise owns the building. Authorities said she recently moved out of state.