Out-of-control wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting more than 130,000 people to flee their homes in America's second-largest city.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute is home to one of the nation’s leading research centers devoted to fires — how they start, how they burn, and how to snuff them out.

Firefighters battled Thursday to control a series of major fires in the Los Angeles area that have killed seven people, burned at least 10,000 structures from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena and sent thousands of people frantically fleeing their homes.