Bloomington's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Bloomington is Category A. 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 Bloomington sits at the 6th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Bloomington by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.023g, short-period spectral response 0.048g, 1-second spectral response 0.03g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Bloomington ranks 39 for seismic hazard, the 75th percentile within the state. About 88,344 people live in Bloomington, Minnesota.

What a retrofit costs in Bloomington

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.

Earthquake insurance for a Bloomington home

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.