Baxter's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Baxter is Category A. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Baxter in the 8th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 8% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Baxter sits in Minnesota

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.026g, short-period spectral response 0.055g, 1-second spectral response 0.018g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Baxter ranks 17 for seismic hazard, the 90th percentile within the state. About 9,186 people live in Baxter, Minnesota.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

What this means for insurance

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 Baxter address.

More on how this number was built

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