OAKLAND >> The Bay Area already was hunkered down, weathering planned power shutoffs amid the red-flag fire danger forecasters had predicted due to high winds and low humidity.

Then the reason for the fear was made manifest: Around 1:30 p.m. Friday, a puff of smoke started growing at the base of the Oakland Hills. Fire crews swarmed the neighborhood, attacking the fast-moving flames from the ground and the air. Residents were ordered to evacuate.

Well before sundown, though, officials said they had stopped the forward progress of the five-alarm blaze, limiting its spread to 13 acres and its damage to only two homes, with only minor damage to one. No injuries were reported.

“It was a wind-driven fire and took off very quickly,” Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington said. “It got into the eucalyptus and ran up the hill.”

The blaze was a terrifying reminder of the area’s history: Saturday marks the 33rd anniversary of the Oakland Hills firestorm, which killed 25 people and destroyed some 3,000 homes in 1991.

The fire began in the area of Mountain Boulevard and Maynard Avenue, near Interstate 580. Residents in multiple zones were given mandatory evacuation orders quickly, with several other zones given warnings to consider evacuating.

Delane Sims was working at the salon she owns in San Leandro when she heard about the fire, but she said her husband was home, sleeping, when it broke out.

Standing outside her home, which suffered major damage, on Friday afternoon, Sims expressed her gratitude that her husband had awakened and managed to flee the house.

“I can’t thank God enough,” she said.

Molly Kenefick, who lives in one of the zones that was ordered to evacuate, said she received a call from a neighbor about 1:35 p.m. and looked outside to see flames 20 feet from her property, flames leaping into Eucalyptus trees and flames rising 20 to 30 feet in the air.

“I understand this is a problem for Californians and West Coasters, and I’ve dreaded this,” she said. “But I’m just grateful to be alive.”

The fire was a “stark reminder” of the city’s need to be vigilant and to create defensible space around structures in fire-vulnerable areas, Mayor Sheng Thao said at a news conference.

“The damage could have been much worse than this,” Thao added, while commending the work of the Oakland Fire Department.

As residents fled the flames Friday, that history kept their perspective intact. Betsy and Phillip Wright were in good spirits while parked outside Burckhalter Elementary School, despite having to evacuate their home above Keller Avenue a short time earlier.

The couple has lived in their home for decades and were able to stay put through the big fire of 1991. Though they were not totally prepared for the order Friday afternoon, Betsy Wright said the couple had remembered to grab their prescriptions, passports and election ballots.

“All the neighbors were helping each other,” Betsy Wright said. “Things like this have a tendency to bring the best out of people.”

Oakland Fire spokesperson Michael Hunt said about 150 firefighters battled the blaze, and Cal Fire sent in aircraft to drop fire retardant on the area. Fire crews from several other counties also responded; Covington credited “heroic” work from local firefighters and crews that had come from Marin County and San Francisco to help.

Roderick Spikes, 55, of Oakland, was driving for a ride-share service and said he had just dropped off a passenger when he pulled onto Interstate 580 and saw a small garbage bag with flames coming out of it. He called 911 to report the fire at 1:23 p.m., he said.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Spikes, while gazing at the smoldering hillside and the house that burned at its base. “In my opinion, it was avoidable.”

Fire officials later confirmed that the blaze appeared to have started on the side of the freeway.

Amanda Davis said she heard a helicopter overhead, looked up and realized she had to flee her home in the evacuation zone. Davis said she evacuates livestock for people fleeing disasters in the state and worked feverishly to evacuate her pets and others’.

“It’s easy to go into someone else’s life and do this,” she said. “Having it at my own house? Not OK.”

Before the fire broke out, the region already was preparing for fire danger.

“It’s shaping up about as we expected, especially across the elevated areas,” National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Merchant said late Friday morning. “In those areas, it’s mostly steady in the 20-25 mph range and gusting from 35-45.”

The winds also seemed to be blowing viciously near areas with water, he said. In some areas inland and not near water, the weather service said the wind was blowing about 5-10 mph.

“As you go inland, the heavy winds” are at higher elevations, Merchant said.

PG&E said about 8,184 customers in six Bay Area counties — Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, Napa and Solano — were affected by their planned electrical shutdowns.

Early Friday afternoon, the utility’s outage map for the planned shutdown showed 971 customers without power in Contra Costa County, 663 customers without power in Santa Clara County, and 422 customers in the dark in Alameda County. The most extensive outage was in Napa County, where 3,126 customers were under a planned shutdown.

According to PG&E’s outage map, rural areas near the Mount Diablo State Park and the Black Diamond Mines Regional Park in Contra Costa County were without power Friday morning, along with customers along Morgan Territory Road in unincorporated Clayton and Kirker Pass Road in Concord.

The weather service said winds blew near Mount Diablo at about 25 mph.

In Alameda County, customers off Foothill Road near the Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park were without power Friday morning. Rural areas in Livermore, Milpitas and Sunol also were purposely shut down.

Santa Cruz County also had about 1,200 people in the dark as part of the shutdowns, according to the utility’s outage map. Winds in that area were blowing about 20-25 mph. according to Merchant.