Big Lake, MN: what USGS's seismic model says

Big Lake carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Rank it against the rest of the country and Big Lake sits at the 5th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Big Lake by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.023g, short-period spectral response 0.05g, 1-second spectral response 0.023g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Big Lake ranks 75 for seismic hazard, the 52th percentile within the state. About 12,855 people live in Big Lake, Minnesota.

Retrofit economics for Big Lake

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

More on how this number was built

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