Franklin Park's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Franklin Park in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Franklin Park in the 25th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 25% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Franklin Park by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.044g, short-period spectral response 0.091g, 1-second spectral response 0.045g. Among 193 Pennsylvania cities in this dataset, Franklin Park ranks 119 for seismic hazard, the 39th percentile within the state. About 15,079 people live in Franklin Park, Pennsylvania.

What a retrofit costs in Franklin Park

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Pennsylvania. 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 Franklin Park address.

More on how this number was built

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