Greeley's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Greeley is Category B. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Greeley in the 50th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 50% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Greeley by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.079g, short-period spectral response 0.155g, 1-second spectral response 0.051g. Among 79 Colorado cities in this dataset, Greeley ranks 72 for seismic hazard, the 9th percentile within the state. About 114,363 people live in Greeley, Colorado.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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