Does Douglass Hills, KY need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Douglass Hills in Seismic Design Category C: Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. Nationally, Douglass Hills ranks above 68% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 68th percentile.

How Douglass Hills compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.09g, short-period spectral response 0.185g, 1-second spectral response 0.095g. Among 79 Kentucky cities in this dataset, Douglass Hills ranks 34 for seismic hazard, the 58th percentile within the state. About 5,558 people live in Douglass Hills, Kentucky.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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