Does Belpre, OH need an earthquake retrofit?

Belpre 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 Belpre sits at the 34th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Belpre by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.057g, short-period spectral response 0.116g, 1-second spectral response 0.056g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Belpre ranks 219 for seismic hazard, the 14th percentile within the state. About 6,588 people live in Belpre, Ohio.

Retrofit economics for Belpre

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Ohio. 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 Belpre address.

More on how this number was built

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