Dodge City's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Dodge City in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and Dodge City sits at the 20th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Dodge City by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.038g, short-period spectral response 0.08g, 1-second spectral response 0.043g. Among 63 Kansas cities in this dataset, Dodge City ranks 56 for seismic hazard, the 11th percentile within the state. About 27,663 people live in Dodge City, Kansas.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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.

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 Dodge City address.

More on how this number was built

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