Rain, Snow Continue to Hammer Southland : Weather: Rescuers search for two people who may have drowned in Tijuana River. An expected break today likely to be followed by a new storm on Friday.

Record-breaking rain swept through the valleys and heavy snow fell in the mountains on Wednesday as Southern California and Baja California continued to endure a prolonged siege of winter weather that may have claimed two more lives near the border.

Floodwaters forced the evacuation of a mobile home park in Agua Dulce, and crews labored throughout the day to shore up an eroded levee on the San Gabriel River that threatened to give way and flood a tract of homes in El Monte.

At the Mexican border, federal agents rescued five people from the rain-swollen Tijuana River Tuesday night, but two more were feared lost after being swept away in the current.

Across the border, hundreds of American tourists in the San Quintin area were stranded by washouts on Highway 1, the only route through Baja. Some food supplies reportedly were running short, and Mexican officials said the road probably won’t be reopened until Sunday, at the earliest.

Forecasters said that although skies should clear somewhat today, they are expected to cloud up again on Friday, with more heavy rain forecast for California and south of the border on Saturday and Sunday.

A total of 1.31 inches of rain fell at the Los Angeles Civic Center between midnight and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, easily eclipsing the record for the date of 1.12 inches set in 1969. The season’s total increased to 12.51 inches, more than twice the normal total of 6.02 inches for the date.

It also rained hard in Northern California, with more than six inches falling on some coastal areas, flooding roads, felling trees, knocking out electrical power and delaying flights up to 1 1/2 hours at San Francisco International Airport.

Up to two feet of new snow fell in the Siskiyou and Sierra ranges. Gov. Pete Wilson proclaimed a state of emergency in Plumas County, where the snow has collapsed roofs of more than a dozen businesses. The Sierra snowpack was more than 20 feet deep in some places, bringing increasing optimism that the state’s long drought may be coming to an end.

The problems in Agua Dulce began Wednesday morning when two privately owned reservoirs started overflowing into a creek bed that runs through the Vasquez Paradise mobile home park, which is home to about 40 people.

About 11:30 a.m., with water as deep as four feet in the park, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies ordered the residents to leave. Although most walked out through knee-deep water, four were airlifted by helicopter.

A dozen of the residents gathered at Bartolo’s, a nearby Mexican restaurant, to eat lunch, drink margaritas and worry about their fate. The park’s owners, Diane and Conrad Daigle, picked up the $185 bill.

“We felt badly for everyone and wanted to do our best to make them comfortable,” Diane Daigle said, tears welling up in her eyes. “The park is our life’s savings and everything we ever worked for, and it’s all flowing down the riverbed to Newhall.”

A few hours later, concerned that the earthen dams holding the reservoirs might give way, sheriff’s deputies asked residents at the River’s End recreational vehicle park downstream on the Santa Clara River in Saugus to begin voluntary evacuations.

In El Monte, the Army Corps of Engineers had work crews repair a crumbling levee at the confluence of the San Gabriel River and San Jose Creek. The corps was concerned that water could spill over the eroded top of the 25-foot-high levee and onto homes below.

“There isn’t any immediate danger, but we want to avoid any possible problems,” said Jim Myrtetus, a corps spokesman.

In Santa Clarita, Caltrans crews dynamited two boulders the size of automobiles that were perched precariously on a rain-slick slope over the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Interstate 5, which was closed for several hours Tuesday by snowdrifts from winds up to 70 m.p.h., remained open Wednesday, but the pavement was icy and there were some minor accidents.

In Ventura County, the National Weather Service issued a flood warning Wednesday night urging anyone living near the banks of the Ventura River south of Ojai to move immediately to higher ground. The river, which was the site of massive flooding last winter, had reached its banks by 9 p.m. Wednesday and was expected to overflow by dawn today as rain continued in the northern county.

Several mountain roads in San Bernardino County were closed on and off Wednesday by snow, flooding, mudslides and traffic accidents, including portions of California 138, 173 and 195. Chains were required on portions of the Angeles Crest Highway near Kratka Ridge and Highway 38 near Big Bear City.

More than a dozen Sante Fe freight trains were delayed on Wednesday while crews shored up an undermined embankment that threatened to give way and cut mainline tracks near Hesperia, where as many as 50 homes were flooded by runoff. Mike Martin, a spokesman for the railroad, said operations were back to normal by midafternoon.

At the Mexican border south of San Diego, city lifeguards and U.S. Border Patrol agents said they pulled five undocumented aliens from the Tijuana River as they attempted to enter the United States. One of those rescued told authorities that his sister and their guide had been carried away in the current.

Believing the two missing people might have been carried out to sea, the Coast Guard launched an offshore search, but no one was found.

Mexican authorities said San Quintin, a thriving agricultural and tourist center about 180 miles south of the border, was isolated on Wednesday, with bridges on the only highway washed out north and south of town.

“People are getting panicky,” said Chip Booth, 26, one of more than 1,000 tourists stranded in San Quintin.

“A lot of rich people with Rolex watches are offering whatever it takes for private planes to fly them out,” he told his mother, Pasadena resident Jackie Andrew, during a telephone conversation Wednesday. “But planes can’t get in because of the weather.”

Booth and his girlfriend, Julia White, 18, drove to San Quintin about 10 days ago with UCLA students Matthew Howard, 22, and Brittany Leonard, 21, for what they had planned as a week of camping and surfing.

Howard telephoned his mother, Maggie Howard, in Orange County on Wednesday to say that food was beginning to run short, prices were beginning to rise and they were running out of cash. Mexican authorities said an army food kitchen would be set up in the town by today.

Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said skies over Southern California and Baja should clear today but cloud up Friday with the arrival of a storm system from the central Pacific.

He said rain should begin again Friday afternoon or Friday night, with heavy rain on Saturday and Sunday.

Times staff writers Chris Kraul and H.G. Reza in San Diego and Julie Tamaki in Los Angeles contributed to this story. Malnic reported from Los Angeles.