Does Devils Lake, ND need an earthquake retrofit?

Devils Lake carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Devils Lake ranks above 1% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 1th percentile.

Where Devils Lake sits in North Dakota

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.02g, short-period spectral response 0.043g, 1-second spectral response 0.018g. Among 14 North Dakota cities in this dataset, Devils Lake ranks 14 for seismic hazard, the 0th percentile within the state. About 7,314 people live in Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Retrofit economics for Devils Lake

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

Insuring against this, not just retrofitting

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 Devils Lake address.

More on how this number was built

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