Does Clayton, OH need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Clayton in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Clayton in the 51th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 51% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Clayton sits in Ohio

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.083g, short-period spectral response 0.156g, 1-second spectral response 0.072g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Clayton ranks 34 for seismic hazard, the 87th percentile within the state. About 13,296 people live in Clayton, Ohio.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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 Clayton address.

More on how this number was built

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