Bondurant's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Bondurant is Category B. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Bondurant ranks above 16% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 16th percentile.

Bondurant by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.029g, short-period spectral response 0.061g, 1-second spectral response 0.052g. Among 85 Iowa cities in this dataset, Bondurant ranks 54 for seismic hazard, the 37th percentile within the state. About 9,511 people live in Bondurant, Iowa.

What a retrofit costs in Bondurant

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

More on how this number was built

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