MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – A deer hunting trip that was supposed to wrap up with a family Thanksgiving celebration ended in tragedy instead when fire ripped through a Northeast Kingdom cabin, killing a 22-year-old man despite rescue efforts by his brother and father.

“It’s a real tragedy,” said family friend Glenn Bishop.

The blaze broke out late Wednesday, destroying a two-story wooden cabin in Craftsbury where seven people had gathered and were planning to celebrate the holiday. All except Adam Poquette, of Champlain, N.Y., got out alive.

Poquette, a hunting and fishing buff, had talked his father, Allen Poquette, 47, into taking the week off so they could go hunting. They arrived at the cabin Nov. 17, along with Poquette’s 13-year-old brother, Josh, and other family members.

The cabin, a frequent vacation spot for the family, had running water but no electricity and relied on electric generators for power and wood stoves for heat.

“Usually, (Allen Poquette) goes back home for Thanksgiving,” said Bishop, 53, of Albany, a hunting friend of the older Poquette who was out hunting with the group Tuesday. “This year, his wife was going to be coming. They were going to have Thanksgiving up here. But that didn’t turn out.”

All seven people were asleep or in bed – Poquette on the upper level of the cabin loft – when Allen Poquette’s sister smelled smoke and alerted the others, he said Friday in a telephone interview.

“We’d just hit the pillows and were dozing off,” he said. “It was pretty smoky. It all happened so quick. My youngest boy went up, trying to get Adam. He made two attempts and when he came down the last time he said “Adam’s still up there.

“The smoke was so bad. I tried twice and couldn’t get him,” Allen Poquette said.

Both suffered minor burns on their arms trying to rescue Poquette.

Fire companies from Craftsbury and neighboring Albany responded but arrived to find the roof collapsed and the cabin completely engulfed, their firefighting efforts hampered by its location on a steep hill accessible only through a narrow driveway surrounded by trees.

“We had to manually drag the lines up that hill before we could attack,” said Craftsbury Fire Chief Walter Gutzmann.

The cause remains unknown, he said.

Poquette, who worked as a machinist at Vermont Precision Tools in Swanton, was a family-oriented man who could always be counted on to help others, his father said.

“He was loving, he cared about people. Just a really family-oriented boy. He did everything he could to help us,” his father said.

It was the first fatal fire in the history of Craftsbury, a small town located about 25 miles south of the Canadian border, the chief said.

“What a terrible thing,” Gutzmann said.

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