Hudson River-Soaked Luggage Restored

FORT WORTH, Texas - On Jan. 15, the 150 passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 ditched their belongings from the plane that had landed in the Hudson River. Now they are getting their precious items back thanks to the work of a North Texas company.

The New York Times reports that Fort Worth-based Global BMS recently began mailing passengers' possessions back.

After the accident, US Airways called the comapny, which specializes in disaster recoveries, to recover the plane wreckage. Workers tagged each water and jet fuel-soaked luggage item that was found. Everything was put on refrigerated trucks and shipped to Texas.

At their Fort Worth facility, workers spent four months defrosting, cleaning and restoring as many personal belongings as they could. Some of the restored items include clothing, wallets, handbags, cameras, jewelry, important papers, toothbrushes and even one computer hard drive.

Many of the passengers were happy to be finally getting their favorite pair of jeans or their car keys returned to them. The items were all carefully wrapped in tissue paper and fabric softener sheets.

"The smell was a little overpowering; imagine 100 dryer sheets all at once. But a lot of care and attention went into the packaging of it," said passenger Tracey Wolsko, who had lost her Our Lady of Lourdes medallion. The medallion was bought for her by her husband at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. "It made a very emotional experience as positive as it could have been."

Several days after the famous splashdown, US Airways had sent all of the passengers $5,000 for their lost luggage . The airline is also reportedly beginning to offer $10,000 to passengers if they agree not to sue the company.