Does Federal Way, WA need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Federal Way in Seismic Design Category D: High seismic hazard - this is the category most of coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, and other active fault regions fall into. Code mandates significant seismic detailing and restricts irregular structural configurations. This is the category the Brace + Bolt scope (cripple-wall bracing, foundation bolting) is built for. That puts Federal Way in the 92th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 92% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Federal Way by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.565g, short-period spectral response 1.336g, 1-second spectral response 0.459g. Among 125 Washington cities in this dataset, Federal Way ranks 28 for seismic hazard, the 78th percentile within the state. About 100,252 people live in Federal Way, Washington.

Retrofit economics for Federal Way

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

Earthquake insurance for a Federal Way 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 Federal Way address.

More on how this number was built

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