Does Cameron, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Cameron in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Cameron in the 10th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 10% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Cameron sits in Texas

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.029g, short-period spectral response 0.062g, 1-second spectral response 0.039g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Cameron ranks 281 for seismic hazard, the 27th percentile within the state. About 5,527 people live in Cameron, Texas.

Retrofit economics for Cameron

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.

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 Cameron address.

More on how this number was built

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