MISSOULA — The University of Montana and parts of downtown Missoula went dark Wednesday night after several power lines fell along the Kim Williams Trail on campus.

High winds hit the Missoula Valley around 5:30 p.m. causing the power lines to topple, a transformer to blow, and some trees to catch fire.

Max Scott was at Jacob's Island dog park when the power lines were hit.

"We heard some crackling and looked over across the little creek next to the dog park and just saw one of the lines go down," he told MTN.

He described the incident as a domino effect.

"They just kept getting knocked over and then the transformer just exploded and then the trees kind of caught on fire," he said.

The City of Missoula Fire Department responded to multiple outages due to the weather. The blackout del

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