Braintree Town, MA: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Braintree Town in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Braintree Town ranks above 61% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 61th percentile.

How Braintree Town compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.136g, short-period spectral response 0.236g, 1-second spectral response 0.061g. Among 58 Massachusetts cities in this dataset, Braintree Town ranks 33 for seismic hazard, the 44th percentile within the state. About 39,134 people live in Braintree Town, Massachusetts.

Retrofit economics for Braintree Town

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Massachusetts. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

What this means for insurance

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 Braintree Town address.

More on how this number was built

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