Berthoud's Seismic Design Category, explained

Berthoud 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 Berthoud sits at the 54th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Berthoud sits in Colorado

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.094g, short-period spectral response 0.178g, 1-second spectral response 0.054g. Among 79 Colorado cities in this dataset, Berthoud ranks 62 for seismic hazard, the 22th percentile within the state. About 13,648 people live in Berthoud, Colorado.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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