When US Airways Flight 1549 went into the Hudson River last month, it gave William Wiley, an engineer at Software Associates, a new meaning for the term “computer crash.”

Mr. Wiley was on his way home to Johnson, Tenn., from the company’s headquarters on Long Island. He had years of work on his laptop, carefully backed up on another laptop — but both were on the plane with him.

Now the two laptops are among approximately 50,000 passenger items that a mortuary company has frozen, in refrigerated trucks, to preserve them until they can be dried, cleaned and returned to their owners. The work includes recovering data on Mr. Wiley’s computers.

“They’ll probably recover everything,” he said, a touch of optimism in his voice, though US Airways said it was too early to tell. Mr. Wiley put the value of the data at $30,000. The airline has given $5,000 to each passenger on the flight.

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