Farmingdale's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Farmingdale is 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 Farmingdale sits at the 61th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Farmingdale by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.139g, short-period spectral response 0.236g, 1-second spectral response 0.054g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Farmingdale ranks 77 for seismic hazard, the 55th percentile within the state. About 8,553 people live in Farmingdale, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Farmingdale

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for New York. 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 Farmingdale address.

More on how this number was built

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