Does Eatontown, NJ need an earthquake retrofit?

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Eatontown is 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 Eatontown sits at the 61th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Eatontown compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.142g, short-period spectral response 0.239g, 1-second spectral response 0.053g. Among 194 New Jersey cities in this dataset, Eatontown ranks 138 for seismic hazard, the 29th percentile within the state. About 13,582 people live in Eatontown, New Jersey.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

What this means for insurance

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 Eatontown address.

More on how this number was built

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