Eaton's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Eaton in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Eaton in the 48th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 48% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Eaton compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.074g, short-period spectral response 0.148g, 1-second spectral response 0.05g. Among 79 Colorado cities in this dataset, Eaton ranks 75 for seismic hazard, the 5th percentile within the state. About 5,839 people live in Eaton, Colorado.

What a retrofit costs in Eaton

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

More on how this number was built

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