Does Evansville, WI need an earthquake retrofit?

Evansville carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Evansville in the 21th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 21% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Evansville by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.041g, short-period spectral response 0.084g, 1-second spectral response 0.051g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, Evansville ranks 23 for seismic hazard, the 86th percentile within the state. About 5,819 people live in Evansville, Wisconsin.

What a retrofit costs in Evansville

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

Earthquake insurance for a Evansville 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 Evansville address.

More on how this number was built

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