Bellwood, IL: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Bellwood in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Bellwood in the 39th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 39% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Bellwood by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.062g, short-period spectral response 0.123g, 1-second spectral response 0.064g. Among 330 Illinois cities in this dataset, Bellwood ranks 205 for seismic hazard, the 38th percentile within the state. About 18,132 people live in Bellwood, Illinois.

What a retrofit costs in Bellwood

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.

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 Bellwood address.

More on how this number was built

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