Bonne Terre's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Bonne Terre 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 Bonne Terre sits at the 85th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Bonne Terre by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.287g, short-period spectral response 0.52g, 1-second spectral response 0.196g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Bonne Terre ranks 12 for seismic hazard, the 92th percentile within the state. About 6,487 people live in Bonne Terre, 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.

Earthquake insurance for a Bonne Terre 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 Bonne Terre address.

More on how this number was built

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