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TRACY McCUE and LINDA STINNETT
Photo and Story Republished with Permission, Wellington Daily News

A Caldwell volunteer firefighter died from injuries sustained in an accident as he and other firefighters responded to offer assistance at another accident north of Caldwell yesterday afternoon.

Lyndall Smith, 46, of Caldwell, died a short time later from an accident at 3:13 p.m. five miles north of Caldwell, according to the Sumner County sheriff's office. Smith was an employee of Caldwell Utilities and funeral services are pending at Elliott-Schaeffer Mortuary in Caldwell.

Courtesy Wellington Daily News Sheriff's officer John Bevan investigates a fatality accident yesterday in which a volunteer Caldwell firefighter died. As shown above the 1984 fire vehicle came to rest on its side in a wheat field five miles north of Caldwell.

Two other firefighters, Rick Volavka, 48, and Lary D. Wolff, 53, both of Caldwell, sustained serious injuries in the same accident, the sheriff's office reported.

Both were patients this morning at the Caldwell district hospital, but the hospital declined to release patient conditions on either.

Volavka, who has been the fire chief in Caldwell for several years, was driving the 1984 Jeep fire vehicle northbound from Caldwell on Kansas Highway 49, when the firefighters came upon another northbound vehicle on the highway. That vehicle, driven by Alison A. Hughet, 18, of Wellington, began turning left at 120th Street South as the Jeep was passing her.

Volavka lost control of the Jeep as it tried to avoid Hughet's 1977 Chevrolet and it rolled into the ditch on the east side of the road, coming to rest in a wheat field, according to the sheriff's report. All three appeared to have been thrown from the vehicle.

The three were heading to another accident which occurred at 3:02 p.m., 8-1/2 miles north of Caldwell, just south of the K-49 and Kansas Highway 44 junction. In that accident, a 1988 Ford truck owned by the Sumner-Cowley Electric Cooperative in Wellington, had also rolled over off the highway.

The driver, Charles R. Bryant, 56, of South Haven, had been on a routine service call in the Caldwell area and was driving northbound on K-49 when the right wheels slipped off the edge of the highway. That sent the truck into the ditch, where it struck a culvert and caused the truck to roll over.

Bryant suffered head lacerations, which required nearly 19 stitches. He was taken by Caldwell EMS to Sumner Regional Medical Center, where he was held overnight for observation, according to Cletas Rains, general manager of Sumner-Cowley REC.