Apex's Seismic Design Category, explained

Apex carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Apex in the 37th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 37% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Apex sits in North Carolina

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.059g, short-period spectral response 0.124g, 1-second spectral response 0.062g. Among 147 North Carolina cities in this dataset, Apex ranks 107 for seismic hazard, the 27th percentile within the state. About 75,977 people live in Apex, North Carolina.

What a retrofit costs in Apex

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for North Carolina. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Insuring against this, not just retrofitting

Outside California, earthquake coverage is typically sold as an endorsement added to a standard homeowners policy, not a separate product - worth asking about directly when getting a home-insurance quote for a Apex address.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Apex's numbers. The guide to what a Seismic Design Category actually means covers why a category is never a substitute for an engineer's assessment of one specific house.