Georgetown, SC: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Georgetown 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. Nationally, Georgetown ranks above 84% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 84th percentile.

Where Georgetown sits in South Carolina

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.268g, short-period spectral response 0.476g, 1-second spectral response 0.157g. Among 66 South Carolina cities in this dataset, Georgetown ranks 13 for seismic hazard, the 82th percentile within the state. About 8,821 people live in Georgetown, South Carolina.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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