Black Jack, MO: what USGS's seismic model says

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Black Jack is 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. Rank it against the rest of the country and Black Jack sits at the 82th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Black Jack by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.215g, short-period spectral response 0.387g, 1-second spectral response 0.146g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Black Jack ranks 45 for seismic hazard, the 67th percentile within the state. About 6,575 people live in Black Jack, Missouri.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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