Colby, KS: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Colby in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Colby in the 13th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 13% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Colby by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.035g, short-period spectral response 0.075g, 1-second spectral response 0.032g. Among 63 Kansas cities in this dataset, Colby ranks 63 for seismic hazard, the 0th percentile within the state. About 5,539 people live in Colby, Kansas.

Retrofit economics for Colby

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

More on how this number was built

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