Benton, IL: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Benton in Seismic Design Category D: High seismic hazard - this is the category most of coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, and other active fault regions fall into. Code mandates significant seismic detailing and restricts irregular structural configurations. This is the category the Brace + Bolt scope (cripple-wall bracing, foundation bolting) is built for. That puts Benton in the 86th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 86% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Benton compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.362g, short-period spectral response 0.629g, 1-second spectral response 0.222g. Among 330 Illinois cities in this dataset, Benton ranks 11 for seismic hazard, the 97th percentile within the state. About 6,578 people live in Benton, Illinois.

What a retrofit costs in Benton

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 Benton 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 Benton address.

More on how this number was built

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