El Paso's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places El Paso 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. Rank it against the rest of the country and El Paso sits at the 73th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

El Paso by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.135g, short-period spectral response 0.335g, 1-second spectral response 0.109g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, El Paso ranks 1 for seismic hazard, the 100th percentile within the state. About 681,723 people live in El Paso, Texas.

What a retrofit costs in El Paso

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

Earthquake insurance for a El Paso home

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 El Paso address.

More on how this number was built

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