Thirteen months ago, a powerful coastal storm caused $500,000 in damage to Camden’s waterfront.

Just over a year later, two major storms just days apart battered the seaside town again, ripping off private piers and docks, flooding local restaurants, punching holes in seawalls and carrying off a large propane tank.

“This was the storm that completely reshaped the coast of Maine and Camden is no exception,” said Town Manager Audra Caler.

And while town officials are still totaling up the costs from the two January storms, Caler estimates that it will exceed the half-million in damage caused by the December 2022 storm.

She and other town officials up and down the coast are continuing to get a handle on the fallout from the Jan. 10 and Jan 13 storms that toppled the bricks out from under a historic lighthouse bell tower, sent fishing shacks into the sea and set a new high-water record in Portland.

Camden is lucky to have the reserves to front the money needed to make repairs, especially considering it could take a year or more to get federal funds, Caler said. But moving forward that may no longer be the case.

She said she’s hoping federal officials will consider helping to plan for destructive events before they happen, rather than responding afterward.

“I hope an event like this would be the impetus for moving forward with that kind of change,” she said. “It’s not going to be financially viable for any government to respond.”

On a recent day, there were a few clues that something big had happened — sandbags and crowd control barriers against a building, red tape that said “danger” to keep people off a deck outside the Grand Harbor Inn.

Yet most year-round shops and restaurants are open, and a few tourists milled about, taking in the sites including the Megunticook River Falls.

Down near the head of the harbor, the Camden Yacht Club sustained significant damage Jan. 10, when the winds blew harder and the “force of the waves and surge were more violent,” than the storm three days later, said Colleen Duggan, who acts as the club’s equivalent of a chairperson.

“We’re kind of the canary in the coal mine,” she said. “It hits our seawall first.”

As a result, they have a “big gaping hole to fill” in the wall. Yellow police tape now surrounds the property, which is near Penobscot Bay.

The storm ripped off metal railings, pushed a lot of debris onto the property and churned up what Duggan described as “enormous amounts of seaweed.”

“In 13 months, we’ve had three terrible storms with wind out of the southeast, which is where we’re more vulnerable as a harbor,” Duggan said. “We can’t solve this problem by ourselves. It’s a lot bigger than us.”

Just down from the yacht club is the Waterfront restaurant, where owner Sam Appleton is working on repairs after 18 inches of water came in. They are stripping walls up two or three feet, tearing out wet insulation, fixing the heating system and waiting on new carpet.

Appleton said this is only the second time in 45 years that he’s seen this much water. The other time was in the storm of 1978.

He said his flood insurance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency may help with some of the cost — but only after he exceeds his $50,000 deductible.

“I know I have more than that in damage, but not a huge amount more,” he said. “It will be a lot of money out of pocket.”

Despite all that, he hopes to reopen his year-round restaurant that serves coastal classics such as clam chowder and lobster stew, by Feb. 1.

For the last several years, Camden has worked to become a year-round destination for tourists. Already well-known for its picturesque downtown, a state park with stunning views and as the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, the town is now known for its ski mountain.

The Camden Snow Bowl is a big reason the town made the Reader’s Digest list of Best Winter Destinations in Every State, according to a December listing in the magazine.

“Get out there and have some fun in the cold at Camden Snow Bowl, the only ski area on the east coast where you can actually see the ocean,” the magazine wrote.

The write-up also mentioned the U.S. National Toboggan Championships, which are set for Feb. 2-4.

Caler said there’s adequate snow and cold to support the event this year, unlike last year, when it wasn’t cold enough to freeze over the pond at the end of the toboggan chute.

As she looks forward, the Snow Bowl may also be one of the town-owned entities most affected by climate change.

“It’s sort of becoming more and more difficult to look at the future and think it’s practical,” she said.

That may be the case for other popular destinations, including the falls that are a hallmark of the town. Caler said the town has been lucky so far to have either inland flooding or coastal storm surge, but it hasn’t had to deal with both at the same time.

“Our biggest challenge in Maine and the Midcoast is still the increase in precipitation and overland flooding,” she said. “We’re all going to have to make difficult and painful decisions. Cherished elements of what make up a community, we’re going to have to reimagine. They can’t look like they’ve looked for hundreds of years.”