Does Ham Lake, MN need an earthquake retrofit?

Ham Lake carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Ham Lake ranks above 3% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 3th percentile.

Where Ham Lake sits in Minnesota

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.022g, short-period spectral response 0.047g, 1-second spectral response 0.025g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Ham Lake ranks 118 for seismic hazard, the 24th percentile within the state. About 16,905 people live in Ham Lake, Minnesota.

Retrofit economics for Ham Lake

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Minnesota. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

What this means for insurance

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 Ham Lake address.

More on how this number was built

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