Bloomington, IN: what USGS's seismic model says

Bloomington carries Seismic Design Category C under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. That puts Bloomington in the 72th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 72% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Bloomington compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.127g, short-period spectral response 0.242g, 1-second spectral response 0.103g. Among 126 Indiana cities in this dataset, Bloomington ranks 14 for seismic hazard, the 90th percentile within the state. About 79,986 people live in Bloomington, Indiana.

Retrofit economics for Bloomington

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

More on how this number was built

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