Bernalillo's Seismic Design Category, explained

Bernalillo carries Seismic Design Category D under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. 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. Nationally, Bernalillo ranks above 82% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 82th percentile.

Where Bernalillo sits in New Mexico

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.211g, short-period spectral response 0.483g, 1-second spectral response 0.158g. Among 35 New Mexico cities in this dataset, Bernalillo ranks 3 for seismic hazard, the 94th percentile within the state. About 9,159 people live in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

Retrofit economics for Bernalillo

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

Insuring against this, not just retrofitting

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 Bernalillo address.

More on how this number was built

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