SAN DIEGO -- A duffel bag containing hundreds of waterlogged Bank of America financial documents lost in a 1994 plane crash washed ashore a San Diego beach this week.

The bag was one of 19 containing financial-transaction documentation aboard a twin-engine Cessna that crashed about 4 miles west of La Jolla on Feb. 7, 1994, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Cindy Rice, a Ramona resident, was piloting the flight from San Diego to Burbank for Pacific Air Charter Inc. of San Diego when the plane crashed.

The wreckage and Rice's remains were found several weeks later, about 1,000 feet below the water's surface at the edge of La Jolla Cove canyon.

Most of the duffel bags were never found, forcing the bank to hold emergency meetings on how to deal with the missing documents. Many customers discovered that their deposits had not been posted.

Using computer records, Bank of America was later able to reconstruct the transactions, the newspaper reported.

The bag washed ashore on Tuesday and was later turned over to Bank of America executives.

A bank executive told the Union-Tribune that this week's find is interesting, although of little practical value.

"This has been in the ocean since February 1994, so the materials have basically deteriorated," said Bank of America spokesman Ken Preston.

"The stuff has been shipped to our corporate security office in Los Angeles," he said, adding that "they're trying to make sure that there is no work that can be recovered from it, and all the number of the deposits are secure."

A researcher from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said the bag probably was stuck under water until recent weeks, possibly held below by remnants of the plane wreck. The bag could have been freed by underwater currents, he said.