Does Elwood, IN need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Elwood 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 Elwood sits at the 45th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Elwood compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.07g, short-period spectral response 0.142g, 1-second spectral response 0.076g. Among 126 Indiana cities in this dataset, Elwood ranks 70 for seismic hazard, the 45th percentile within the state. About 8,495 people live in Elwood, Indiana.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Elwood 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 Elwood address.

More on how this number was built

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