STORM FEARS FUEL BIG PROFITS; SANDBAGS, PET LOCATER DO WELL.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Proving that one person's disaster is another's marketing opportunity, several enterprising companies have found ways to profit from predictions of an unusually wet El Nino winter.

A company that produces identification microchips for implanting into pets is using the prospect of El Nino to lure pet owners into registering their dogs and cats in case they become lost in floods or mudslides.

And an Illinois firm that makes a sandbagging machine reports a brisk year for business, especially in California.

``El Nino brought a great deal of interest, and it really boosted sales,'' said Stacey Kanzler, president of the Sandbagger Corp.

Aside from a certain entrepreneurial chutzpah, both firms benefit from timing.

Sandbagger of Wauconda, Ill., was founded four years ago, long before the current El Nino began. In its first three years, the firm sold in California just 20 machines, each of which can fill up to 1,600 sandbags per hour.

But last fall, after El Nino had been building strength for months, the company sold 35 machines in the region, at a price of $7,000 for a small model and $16,000 for a large one. El Nino, a weather-altering phenomenon fueled by unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific, often brings heavy rain to California.

Pet microchip technology, meanwhile, has been around for a decade. But with the continuing possibility of heavy rains due to El Nino, AVID Microchip Co. launched a program to register pets before rains hit.

During last year's floods in the Central Valley, the company implanted microchips in about a thousand lost pets in the shelters around Sacramento, said Michael Burns, director of AVID's shelter programs. But those pets, he said, could have been reunited with their owners far sooner if they been tagged before the floods.

``If we could have had them microchipped before, it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble,'' Burns said.