Payne, OH - A man doing maintenance on a water tower in Payne, Ohio has been rescued after his safety harness broke early Tuesday afternoon, leaving him dangling in the air for more than an hour.

The man was doing subcontracting work for Comcast which has equipment on the tower. After his harness broke, another safety line kept him from falling to the ground.

"He was fairly calm," recalled Van Wert County Fire Chief Jim Steele. "Obviously, he wanted down and obviously he was cold and had been in that harness a long time."

"We had our rope teams up on the catwalk of the water tower. They were able to lower rope down to him, secure him and lower him slowly into the basket," explained Steele.

As soon as the man was back on the ground, medics rushed him into a waiting ambulance. He was taken to a hospital to be treated for exposure after being in the cold weather for so long.

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