Does Johnstown, PA need an earthquake retrofit?

Johnstown 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, Johnstown ranks above 14% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 14th percentile.

How Johnstown compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.042g, short-period spectral response 0.089g, 1-second spectral response 0.04g. Among 193 Pennsylvania cities in this dataset, Johnstown ranks 191 for seismic hazard, the 1th percentile within the state. About 17,853 people live in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

What a retrofit costs in Johnstown

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

More on how this number was built

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