Does Circleville, OH need an earthquake retrofit?

Circleville carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Circleville ranks above 36% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 36th percentile.

Circleville by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.059g, short-period spectral response 0.119g, 1-second spectral response 0.062g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Circleville ranks 205 for seismic hazard, the 19th percentile within the state. About 14,433 people live in Circleville, Ohio.

Retrofit economics for Circleville

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

More on how this number was built

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