Four killed in fiery crash on major US Interstate

The accident occurred in Lakewood, a western suburb of Colorado's capital and eight miles (about 13 km) from downtown Denver. It was described by local officials as one of the worst vehicle crashes in the city's history.

I-70 opened in both directions late Friday afternoon, more than a day after the deadly crash.

"It is true carnage there -- as far as the debris -- what's left of cars and trucks along with the cargoes that were in the semi's," Lakewood Police Department agent Ty Countryman told local media.

Countryman said an 18-wheel tractor-trailer truck carrying lumber, traveling at high speed, slammed into traffic that was stopped due to rush hour traffic -- triggering an explosion that incinerated several cars.

"It was crash, crash, crash and explosion, explosion, explosion," Lakewood Police spokesman John Romero said at a briefing conference, describing a chain reaction of explosions from ruptured gas tanks that filled the Denver skies with black smoke.

The driver of the 80-foot-long truck that caused the pile-up, Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, from Texas, was arrested and incarcerated on two counts of vehicular homicide-reckless driving, according to the police.

Aguilera-Mederos is of Cuban descent and a permanent resident of the United States, and the police said he was cooperating with the investigation.

Countryman told the media that there was no indication that drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.

A day after the crash, the police still had not announced those killed because their bodies had been burned beyond recognition.

The Colorado Department of Transportation spent most of Friday milling out asphalt burned by the inferno and repaving a 100-yard section of the interstate.

I-70 is a major east-west Interstate highway in the United States that runs from Baltimore, Maryland through Colorado into Utah, for 2,151 miles (about 3,462 km), and was built in 1956.