Fairmont's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Fairmont 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 Fairmont sits at the 27th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Fairmont sits in West Virginia

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.046g, short-period spectral response 0.096g, 1-second spectral response 0.049g. Among 26 West Virginia cities in this dataset, Fairmont ranks 22 for seismic hazard, the 16th percentile within the state. About 18,063 people live in Fairmont, West Virginia.

What a retrofit costs in Fairmont

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

More on how this number was built

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