Garland's Seismic Design Category, explained

Garland 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 Garland in the 30th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 30% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Garland sits in Texas

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.05g, short-period spectral response 0.104g, 1-second spectral response 0.056g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Garland ranks 84 for seismic hazard, the 78th percentile within the state. About 250,431 people live in Garland, Texas.

What a retrofit costs in Garland

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

More on how this number was built

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