In the days after Sandy pummeled the Atlantic coast, Tom Reynolds had more on his hands than just downed trees and flooding in Marshfield. Reynolds, superintendent of the town’s Department of Public Works, also roamed the coastline, giving a once-over to the 2.7 miles of sea walls separating dry land from the sometimes frothing sea. He inspected cracks that may have deepened; the tops of the sea wall — called caps — that are constantly crumbling, and cosmetic patches that had been obliterated by the pounding of the ocean on Monday night.

“There are some locations where some of the cap, which was starting to crumble, had crumbled a bit more, and some spots where we had patched it have deteriorated from the pounding of the surf,” he said.