I had that problem once before too. My palm restarted itself and when I loaded the game again I had lost a dozen people to death, but besides that everything else was fine.

Did you hotsync before you crashed? If you did you could go into C:\Program Files\Palm\Gemelle\Backup\

Drag out VillageSavegame.PDB and quick install it to your palm. It should bring back the game as of the last time you saved it. I had to do that once when my Golden Child vanished into thin air not long after the fatal error. XD