Does Farmers Branch, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

Farmers Branch 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 Farmers Branch in the 30th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 30% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Farmers Branch sits in Texas

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.05g, short-period spectral response 0.103g, 1-second spectral response 0.055g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Farmers Branch ranks 86 for seismic hazard, the 78th percentile within the state. About 37,341 people live in Farmers Branch, Texas.

What a retrofit costs in Farmers Branch

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 Farmers Branch 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 Farmers Branch address.

More on how this number was built

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