CARIBOU — Firefighters rushed into a burning mobile home in far northern Maine early Thursday but they were too late to save a woman, her 4-year-old son and 2-year-old twins, a boy and girl, killed in the inferno.

The bodies of Norma Skidgel, 28, and her three children —  Mason and Madison Delisle, who were 2, and Trenton Delisle, who would have turned four next week — were found in a back room of the home.  

 Amy Bouchard, Skidgel’s sister, and her two sons also lived there.  Bouchard and one of her sons left the mobile home a short time before the 7 a.m. fire to go to a bus stop. The home was on fire when she returned.  Bouchard is being treated at a local hospital for smoke inhalation after attempting to enter the burning mobile home.

A second son spent the night elsewhere.  

Officials said the fire occurred in a mobile home park on the city’s outskirts, about four miles from Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge. The small park consists of three rows of trailers in a sparsely populated, rural area.

Maine Public Safety Department spokesman Steven McCausland said 25 people have died in fires this year in the state, the most in 21 years. Fires killed 27 in 1993.

This month has been especially deadly for Maine fires — a fire Nov. 1 in Portland claimed six lives and another this week killed a man in St. Francis in far northern Maine. The 11 fire fatalities in November have accounted for more in one month than occurred in all of 2010, when the state recorded nine fatalities, all-time low for the state. The worst year for fire deaths was 1967, when 70 people died from fires, McCausland said.

“It illustrates how quickly the death total can rise with a single fire and multiple victims,” McCausland said.

State public health officials encouraged residents to make sure their homes have working smoke detectors and that families review fire escape route plans.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation.

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