Does Batavia, IL need an earthquake retrofit?

Batavia 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. Rank it against the rest of the country and Batavia sits at the 45th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Batavia by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.07g, short-period spectral response 0.136g, 1-second spectral response 0.066g. Among 330 Illinois cities in this dataset, Batavia ranks 94 for seismic hazard, the 72th percentile within the state. About 26,555 people live in Batavia, Illinois.

Retrofit economics for Batavia

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

Earthquake insurance for a Batavia home

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 Batavia address.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Batavia'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.