Flatwoods's Seismic Design Category, explained

Flatwoods 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 Flatwoods in the 50th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 50% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Flatwoods compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.08g, short-period spectral response 0.155g, 1-second spectral response 0.069g. Among 79 Kentucky cities in this dataset, Flatwoods ranks 60 for seismic hazard, the 24th percentile within the state. About 7,250 people live in Flatwoods, Kentucky.

What a retrofit costs in Flatwoods

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

What this means for insurance

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 Flatwoods address.

More on how this number was built

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