Doug Hall

"I arrived just as the crash happened," said Channel 8 viewer Doug Hall, who snapped this photo moments after the wreck.

LAKE DALLAS — The driver of a large truck, which was hauling 4,500 gallons of diesel when it crashed and exploded Thursday afternoon, died from the severe burns that covered his whole body.

The explosive accident happened shortly before 2 p.m. on Interstate 35E in Lake Dallas and led to massive traffic delays after it shut down the highway in both directions between Lewisville and Denton for hours.

Texas Troopers said the bobtail truck driver, 28-year-old Matt Webb of Krum, apparently hit the brakes abruptly when he saw that the northbound traffic ahead of him had suddenly slowed down. He then lost control of the Taylor Oil Company truck, clipped a car and slammed the truck into a median.

"It jumped the median and then it exploded like a huge bomb," said Galynn Lindemann, a witness. "It was surreal."

Both Webb and a passenger, 25-year-old Roland Mattern of Saginaw, were burned in the accident.

Brandon Carter, an eyewitness at the scene, said the driver jumped out of the truck engulfed in flames.

"He was completely covered in fire," he said.

Carter said people driving northbound got out of their vehicles, rushed over to the driver and attempted to smother the fire out with their clothes.

After Jasper Quintana, an owner of a nearby Mexican restaurant, heard the explosion, he ran outside and saw the fiery scene.

"I ran back inside and grabbed my fire extinguisher," he said.

Quintana joined the other Good Samaritans helping Webb and said he sprayed him with the extinguisher.

CareFlite took both men to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

With burns to 100 percent of his body, Webb, who had only worked for Taylor Oil a few months and was a driver in training at the time of the accident, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m., said Ed Miller, a pastor of Lake Shore Baptist Church in Lake Dallas.

Mattern, who Miller said attended Lake Shore Baptist along with Webb since they were kids, suffered burns to 35 percent of his body.

Both Mattern and Webb's wives are pregnant.

Lake Dallas firefighters were the first to respond to the accident, but firefighters from other areas joined in to tackle the blaze. Before they could even approach the truck, firefighters were forced to wait until the gasoline burned itself out.

Traffic in the area was termed "a nightmare," with vehicles backed up in both directions as far as the eye could see.

The accident put afternoon traffic to an abrupt halt. Interstate 35E was closed at FM 2181, Swisher Road, going in both directions, and drivers sat idle for more than three hours.

While the frontage lanes in both directions were later reopened, the highway itself didn't reopen until workers finished hauling off the wreckage and hazardous material teams cleaned residual gas and oil off the highway surface, which was shortly after 9 p.m.

In addition, highway engineers inspected the road for possible damage from the intense heat generated by the burning gasoline. A spokesperson for TxDOT said they were concerned the fire had melted part of the highway.

WFAA-TV reporters Steve Stoler in Lake Dallas and David Schechter in Lewisville