KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A man's life was in the balance Friday morning when a tree-trimming job took an unexpected twist.

Dan Cummins was trimming a tree for his father-in-law when he cut a couple of branches off a massive tree in the back yard near 88th Street and Ford Avenue in Kansas City, Mo. The weight of the branch took the tree back into a power line and energized the entire tree.

Cummins was stuck between two branches. He said the rubber soles of his shoes were the only things that kept him from being electrocuted.

He grabbed a dead branch that wasn't electrified for balance and stood there while his wife called firefighters for help.

"The branch came up here," Cummins said. "My foot stood there. And I stood like this for an hour."

When firefighters arrived, they told Cummins to stay put because they couldn't do anything until crews from Kansas City Power and Light arrived. His father-in-law, meanwhile, shot video and photographed of the ordeal.

"’Where's KCPL?’" Cummins said he asked. "They called and said 20-25 minutes. The fire department said it usually takes longer and I said, 'are you kidding me?' A life is in danger and it takes that long?"

To make matters worse, it began to rain.

A firefighter stood below, and Cummins planned to jump to him some 30 feet below if he felt any shocks. His legs began to cramp, but Cummins stayed put. He said in about an hour, a KCP&L crew finally showed up and within two minutes the power was off and he could get down.

Cummins, an electrician by trade, said his knowledge of electricity saved his life.

"Somebody that doesn't deal with electricity, they'd have gone for the ladder and either been killed or thrown down from the ladder 30 feet to the ground," he said.