Does Cottage Grove, WI need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Cottage Grove in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Cottage Grove ranks above 18% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 18th percentile.

Where Cottage Grove sits in Wisconsin

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.036g, short-period spectral response 0.075g, 1-second spectral response 0.048g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, Cottage Grove ranks 57 for seismic hazard, the 64th percentile within the state. About 8,974 people live in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Cottage Grove 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 Cottage Grove address.

More on how this number was built

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