Chisago City's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Chisago City in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Chisago City ranks above 2% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 2th percentile.

How Chisago City compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.021g, short-period spectral response 0.045g, 1-second spectral response 0.024g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Chisago City ranks 148 for seismic hazard, the 5th percentile within the state. About 5,953 people live in Chisago City, Minnesota.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Minnesota. 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 Chisago City address.

More on how this number was built

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