Europe’s soaring temperatures are hitting the region’s highest peak, Mont Blanc, heightening the risk of rockfall and new crevasses opening on its glaciers, rescuers and climbers said on Wednesday.

This has in turn meant authorities have urged climbers to delay scaling the mountain, which straddles the French-Italian border, because high temperatures have created dangerous conditions.

“The heat wave has also an impact on high mountains, it doesn’t stop on the plains,” said Nicolas Zickler, commanding officer of a high mountain police rescue team. “It facilitates rock falls. By fragilising the snow, it also facilitates crevasse falls.”

Australian alpinist May Cooper called the conditions “terrifying.”

“The routes have changed, the timing of the season has changed, the weather conditions have changed,” she said.

Another Australian alpinist, Daniel Trevena, has been coming to the region for over 10 years.

“It has definitely changed in that time and routes are changing … you can almost see it, just melting away very slowly,” he said, with other high mountains in the region equally affected.

The Swiss weather service said on Monday the elevation at which water froze hit a new record high overnight, measured at 5,289 meters (17,350 ft), an altitude higher than Mont Blanc’s summit of just over 4,800 meters. This exceeded last year’s record of 5,184 meters.

“The decrease of the glaciers is worrying,” said the president of Mont Blanc guide company Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix, Olivier Greber.

“It’s not only a selfish point of view, yes we won’t be able to go for a walk on glaciers, but we should not forget that glaciers are the water towers of many plains. As such, it’s important to preserve them.”

More than 8,000 evacuees from a wildfire that has devastated forests on the Spanish island of Tenerife for more than a week were able to return home as the blaze has been brought under control, authorities said on Wednesday.

The fire, which started on Aug. 15, has so far ravaged almost 15,000 hectares of woodland within the national park surrounding the Mount Teide volcano, Spain’s highest peak.

Around 3,000 residents are still out of their homes.

The fire is largely under control, except in one area in Guimar. However, there are many hot spots which could reactivate during the hottest hours of the day and could once again cross the control line, authorities said.

Twenty aircraft will continue working to control the fire, which has a perimeter of more than 80 km (50 miles).

Firefighters were able to keep the flames from ravaging the Teide Observatory, Rafel Rebolo, head of the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute, told Reuters.

“For 20 hours they were tirelessly fighting against the fire that had entered the laboratory. Our infrastructure has not suffered significant damage,” Rebolo said.

Europe is battling the effects of scorching temperatures. In Greece, Italy and Portugal firefighters were tackling blazes as the region suffered hot, dry and windy conditions that scientists have linked to climate change.

So far this year, wildfires have burnt 65,127 hectares in Spain, in line with the average of the last decade but well below the 228,863 hectares burnt in the same period in 2022, the worst year in a decade, according to official data.

Searing temperatures fuelled wildfires and prompted health warnings across Europe on Wednesday, as a blaze in Turkey forced the closure of the Dardanelles shipping lane and winds fanned the flames in Greece where 20 people have already been killed.

France, which widened its heatwave red alert in the south of the country, said it would scale back production at a nuclear power plant as high temperatures curbed cooling water supply.

In Greece, firefighters battled a blaze for a second day close to Athens, and authorities warned that heat and winds risked stoking more wildfires a day after 18 bodies, probably migrants, were found in a charred northern forest.

A wildfire north of Athens that erupted on Tuesday has smothered the capital in smoke and ash, spreading to the town of Menidi, where about 150 people were evacuated from three nursing homes. Police ordered others to leave as a helicopter clattered overhead to drop water onto the conflagration.

“The fire went out for half an hour…. but with these very strong winds, it’s been alternately starting and then stopping again,” 60-year-old resident Dimitris Armenis told Reuters.

A volunteer carried an icon of the Virgin Mary out of a burning monastery, while police raced to remove large gas canisters from the ash-covered premises.

Another 700 people were moved from a migrant camp in the Amygdaleza region, about 25 km (16 miles) north of Athens, a Migration Ministry official said.

Greek Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said 355 wildfires had broken out since Friday, with 209 new blazes in the last 48 hours alone.

Near the northeastern Greek port city of Alexandroupolis, dozens of hospital patients, some on stretchers, others attached to IV drips, were evacuated onto a ferry as a fire in the area blazed for a fifth day.

Authorities were trying to identify the 18 bodies discovered on Tuesday in Dadia forest in the Evros region on Turkey’s border, on a common route for migrants from the Middle East and Asia trying to cross into the European Union.

On the Turkish side, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday crews had stopped the Canakkale fire’s spread and it would be under control shortly. He said more than 150 ships were halted on the Dardanelles Strait to allow helicopters and planes to scoop up water to contain a forest fire in the area that was raging for a second day.

The strait, linking the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, is a major shipping route for commodities such as oil and grains.

The French national weather service, Meteo-France, reported the country’s highest average temperature for the late summer period after Aug. 15 since records began in 1947. It said some areas of southern France would experience temperatures of 42 degree Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit).

French power producer EDF issued a production warning for the Saint Alban nuclear power plant on the Rhone river because of a shortage of cooling water. Similar warnings have been issued this summer for other plants.

The heatwave has even reached the region’s highest peak, Mont Blanc with authorities urging climbers to delay their ascent because of an increased risk of rock falls and new crevices on glaciers from melting snow.

“It has definitely changed in that time and routes are changing … you can almost see it, just melting away very slowly,” said Australian alpinist Daniel Trevena, who has been coming to the region for 10 years.

In Spain, which is enduring its fourth heatwave of the summer, people who normally receive food and other necessities from the non-governmental organisation Fundacion Madrina were also handed fans on Wednesday to cope with high temperatures.

In Madrid’s El Rastrillo square, fashion worker Daniela said she was struggling to keep cool: “I’m really hoping it is over, this is the last heatwave.”

Firefighters on the Spanish island of Tenerife brought under control a blaze that devastated forests, allowing about 8,000 evacuees to return.

But local farmers protested about the use of scarce water resources to fight the blaze and police said they had arrested an 80-year-old man for throwing stones at a firefighting helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing.

Italy issued heatwave red alerts about “emergency conditions” that the health ministry says could endanger the healthy, as well as those who are frail, in 17 of its 27 main cities for Wednesday and Thursday, including Rome, Milan, Florence and Venice. The number was set to rise to 19 on Friday.

Pont de la Margineda is a medieval Romanesque pedestrian bridge and it is located in the vicinity of the village of La Margineda, which is part of the Parish of Andorra la Vella, within the Principality of Andorra.

The bridge crosses the Gran Valira River which is the main river in the tiny principality, and it is located more precisely near the town of Sant Julià de Lòria, on the road that formerly went from Sant Julià de Lòria to Andorra la Vella.

The entire structure is an impressive masonry work that is 33 meters (108 feet) long, 2 meters (7 feet) wide and the highest point is at 10 meters (33 feet) above the river.

The stones used in the construction are pumice in order to keep the bridge light, all of them linked by a lime mortar, and it is considered that Pont de la Margineda was completed in 1487.

Due to the historic importance this bridge has for the small nation high in the Pyrenees, it was included on the heritage property list, more commonly named as the Cultural Heritage of Andorra, putting it on the radar of the tourists to come and see this masonry marvel in person.

Ultimately being one of the greatest historic works, Pont de la Margineda is certainly one of the more visited spots in Andorra, where people can see the long standing history of the sandwiched principality high up in the Pyrenees.