Does Chesapeake Beach, MD need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Chesapeake Beach in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Chesapeake Beach ranks above 15% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 15th percentile.

How Chesapeake Beach compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.062g, short-period spectral response 0.121g, 1-second spectral response 0.042g. Among 46 Maryland cities in this dataset, Chesapeake Beach ranks 39 for seismic hazard, the 16th percentile within the state. About 6,504 people live in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Chesapeake Beach 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 Chesapeake Beach address.

More on how this number was built

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