Gainesville, GA: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Gainesville in Seismic Design Category C: Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. Rank it against the rest of the country and Gainesville sits at the 71th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Gainesville compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.11g, short-period spectral response 0.214g, 1-second spectral response 0.089g. Among 148 Georgia cities in this dataset, Gainesville ranks 42 for seismic hazard, the 72th percentile within the state. About 47,712 people live in Gainesville, Georgia.

What a retrofit costs in Gainesville

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

More on how this number was built

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