storm surge) neighborhoods, which included Howard Beach's Hamilton Beach area. Most of the rest of Howard Beach lay in Zone B, whose residents were urged to voluntarily evacuate. Many residents decided to stay and ride out the storm, citing the relatively minor damage caused by the previous year's Hurricane Irene. Sandy made landfall on October 29, dragging inland a ten-foot-high storm surge from Jamaica Bay that flooded all of Old and New Howard Beach, plus the neighborhoods of Broad Channel and the Rockaways, along with some sections of Lindenwood and neighboring Ozone Park. The storm knocked out power to Howard Beach for three weeks. The flooding damaged most houses in the neighborhood, all of the stores along Cross Bay Boulevard, the Howard Beach–JFK Airport subway station, and the IND Rockaway Line trestle that carries trains over Jamaica Bay into Broad Channel and the Rockaways. After Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the New York City Office of Emergency Management provisionally re-classified Howard Beach, along with the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Gerritsen Beach and Red Hook, as Zone A neighborhoods. On April 5, 2013, the Howard Beach post office reopened after extensive repairs. Geography Like many New York City neighborhoods, Howard Beach is composed of several smaller neighborhoods – Howard Beach, Old Howard Beach, Hamilton Beach, Ramblersville, Spring Park, Rockwood Park, Lindenwood, and Howard Park (Old Howard Beach, Ramblersville, Howard Park, and Hamilton Beach are sometimes all grouped together as "Old Howard Beach", instead of being referred to by their proper names). Howard Beach proper is a small peninsula bordered by the Belt Parkway and Conduit Avenue on the north, Jamaica Bay on the south, Hawtree Creek on the east, separating it from Hamilton Beach, and Shellbank Basin on the west, that separates it from Cross Bay Boulevard. Cross Bay Boulevard is the main commercial strip of Howard Beach; to the north it turns into Woodhaven Boulevard after Ozone Park. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the Boulevard was made up almost exclusively of locally owned shops and restaurants. Starting in the 1990s, chain stores and restaurants began moving in, and now many well-known franchises have sites on the boulevard. Entertainment venues on Cross Bay Boulevard, such as the Kiddie-Park and Cross-Bay Lanes, were popular until their collapse in the 1970s and 1980s. The Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge (named for a deceased member of the United States House of Representatives who