Does Bulverde, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Bulverde in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Bulverde in the 5th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 5% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Bulverde compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.023g, short-period spectral response 0.05g, 1-second spectral response 0.027g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Bulverde ranks 351 for seismic hazard, the 9th percentile within the state. About 7,198 people live in Bulverde, Texas.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Bulverde 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 Bulverde address.

More on how this number was built

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