In comparison to what some people are losing, it’s the smallest disappointment,” Emerson graduate student Rhiannon Guzelian said Friday morning after arriving at Logan. “It pales in comparison.”

Firefighters are making progress slowing the major fires in the Los Angeles area that have killed five people, ravaged communities from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena and caused thousands of people to flee their homes.

The evacuation to a downtown hotel was done “out of an abundance of caution,” as the Sunset Fire north of the city crept closer to its campus on Sunset Boulevard, Emerson president Jay Bernhardt wrote in the letter sent Thursday to the college community.

Ferocious winds that drove the flames and led to chaotic evacuations have calmed somewhat and were not expected to be as powerful during the day. That could provide an opportunity for firefighters to make progress reining in blazes that have hopscotched across the sprawling region,