Damage Mounts, Rain on Horizon : Weather: More bodies are found in the Tijuana River and more homes are declared uninhabitable. ‘It isn’t over yet,’ one forecaster says.

Southern Californians shoveled mud, propped up sagging buildings, cleared drainage channels and dug out buried cars Monday as two more storms headed this way, bringing the threat of additional flooding and mudslides.

The first storm, expected before dawn today, is expected to drop as much as two inches of rain in the coastal valleys and up to three inches in the foothills by tonight. Forecasters say the second storm should arrive Thursday, with substantial rain Thursday night and Friday.

“The storm pattern is continuing,” said Dean Jones, a meteorologist with WeatherData. “The ground is still saturated, and there’s a real chance of additional damage.”

The winter’s heavy rains have caused major flood and mudslide damage to at least 96 houses in Los Angeles County, including 70 along the Sierra Highway between Saugus and Acton, nine in Pacific Palisades, six in Montebello and five in Agoura Hills.

Dozens more have been damaged in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and 100 residents have been evacuated from the upscale Anaheim Hills area of Orange County, where rain-soaked hillsides threaten to give way beneath 45 homes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said about 3,700 Southern Californians have applied for federal assistance to repair flood damage, and more are expected to sign up this week at the FEMA centers that opened Monday on the Westside and near Dodger Stadium.

Scores of Southern California roads have been undermined, washed out or buried by the heavy runoff. Officials say it will take at least three weeks to rebuild a heavily damaged stretch of the Sierra Highway between Saugus and Agua Dulce.

In Canyon Country, Simone Boisseree had a hard time describing what it all was like before the floods hit.

“This piece of property used to extend from here to . . . “ Boisseree said as she gazed across her front yard. “Gosh, I wish you could see where the wall was.”

The wall was washed away during weekend storms. A virtual river was spawned that tore up roads and driveways and flooded houses as it scythed through the area.

Residents surveyed the devastation along Sierra Highway after they dug their homes and cars out of the mud.

“I don’t know how that got there,” said Tim Landis, pointing to a dumpster that had been tossed into a wooden fence.

“It’s been all such a blur,” said Diane Durcell as she stood in front of a 10-foot-wide ditch that used to be her driveway.

On the other hand, her children were having fun.

“They love it. They’re out panning for gold,” Durcell said of her sons Paul, 9, and Benjamin, 8, and their 8-year-old friend, Kevin Stallarde.

After last month’s heavy rains, Don Jenkins, 28, decided to take precautions. He filled nearly 400 bags with cement and sand and erected two walls to direct runoff through his property.

“It took me two weeks of back-breaking work to do all that, and look what happened,” he said, standing in a ravine where his driveway had been. “It was a disappointment, that’s for sure.”

In San Bernardino County, officials said they saved six houses that had been undermined and were about to collapse into the swollen Mojave River in the unincorporated community of Spring Valley Lake, between Victorville and Apple Valley.

“It’s under control now, and we won’t lose any homes,” said Bill Bethel, spokesman for the San Bernardino County Office of Disaster Preparedness. “We brought in enough (rocks and boulders) to save those houses. If we hadn’t, the river would have undercut its banks, and those five or six homes would have washed into the stream.”

However, about 20 homes in nearby Hesperia were damaged by flooding--six were deemed uninhabitable for now--in an area where there are no curbs or gutters to contain runoff.

“There’s a collapsed floor in one, a garage fell into a ravine in another,” said Hesperia city spokesman John Kornachuk. “This is serious structural damage.”

In addition to fixing washed-out bridges and repairing the banks of the Mojave River, work crews in San Bernardino County were trying to clear landslides on California 18 and California 38 in the Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear areas.

In Riverside County, personnel from the Army Corps of Engineers and local flood-control agencies worked to clear a channel so rising water in Lake Elsinore could be released about 20 miles downstream into the Prado Flood Control Basin near Corona.

Even though low-lying park and recreation areas have been flooded, “there’s no immediate danger of flooding” to permanent structures, Lake Elsinore City Manager Ron Molendyk said.

He said the lake is expected to rise five more feet before spilling into the channel that is being cleared.

In Ventura County, the Casitas Municipal Water District warned residents below Lake Casitas that there could be downstream problems when the steadily rising lake overflows the dam spillway.

The reservoir, which was the site of rowing, kayaking and canoeing events during the 1984 Summer Olympics, was about two inches below the spillway Monday afternoon, Johnson said. He said water will probably spill over today.

Along the U.S.-Mexican border, the discovery of four bodies in the Tijuana River over the weekend brought to 10 the number of suspected border-crossers who have drowned trying to ford flooded waterways since early January, Mexican and U.S. officials said Monday.

To the north, a winter storm watch was in effect for much of the High Sierra, with up to three feet of new snow expected in some areas. The Sierra snowpack, the principal source of water for most urban Californians, is more than 25 feet deep in some areas, but state water officials are reluctant to proclaim an end to California’s prolonged drought.

Meteorologist Jones predicted that generally light showers will start falling over Southern California before sunrise today, with heavier rain, and perhaps a few thundershowers, during the rest of the day.

“It won’t be a steady rain type of thing,” he said. “There might even be a few breaks in the clouds, now and then.”

Jones said the rain will taper off to a few scattered showers Wednesday morning, with partly cloudy skies Wednesday night and Thursday morning before the second storm brings more rain Thursday night, Friday and possibly Saturday.

“There could be another short break then, and there could be some more rainy weather after that,” he said. “It isn’t over yet.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez in Ventura County, Tom Gorman in Riverside County and Sebastian Rotella in San Diego County.