GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Ike battered the seawall for more than 24 hours when it made landfall Sept. 13.

The constant pounding peeled up pavement along Seawall Boulevard and left sinkholes in the sidewalk on top of the wall.

When the crashing waves retreated to the gulf, onlookers feared the worst — severe damage to the island’s storm protection system.

The damage turned out to be cosmetic, and officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said all of the repairs will be finished by the start of this year’s hurricane season.

Although the work will not address the structural integrity of the wall, it will be the first major repair job the 104-year-old structure has had.

The sinkholes might have made it look as though the wall were crumbling from the back side, but the sandy fill below the sidewalk was the only thing Ike’s waves washed out, said Harrison Sutcliffe, chief of the engineering branch for the corp’s Galveston office.

The holes occur at construction joints in the seawall or areas where the wall has openings for drainage pipes, Sutcliffe said.

When waves come over the top of the structure, water gets into the openings and washes out some of the back fill, he said.

Because the wall was built to stand on its own, the sinkholes do not present any danger to the structure itself, Sutcliffe said.

While the damage showed up after Ike, it was most likely a result of wave action over time, through several storms, he said.

Corps crews used ground-penetrating radar to search for other washout points that might become sinkholes in the future.

Those weak spots, as well as the open holes, will be filled.

The work also will fix the ramp at the western end of the seawall and ramps at 35th and 57th streets, which took heavy damage during the storm.

Sutcliffe estimated the work would cost more than $10 million. The corps has some of the funding in hand, with much of the rest of it promised, he said.

The money is part of the emergency funding plan approved by congress after Ike.

The corps is also using the emergency funds to pay for the dredging work and beach reconstruction project near Rollover Pass.

The plans and specifications for the seawall project have been developed, but the contract is not likely to be awarded until April, Sutcliffe said.

Once the repair work is done, artists can start work to freshen up the 2.5-mile-long, weathered mural that covers about one-fifth of the wall.

Several groups have expressed interest in organizing another community painting session, said Peter Davis, captain of the Galveston Island Beach Patrol.

Davis was the art director for the mural, which was completed in the late 1990s.