Kansas City, MO: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Kansas City in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Kansas City in the 26th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 26% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Kansas City sits in Missouri

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.045g, short-period spectral response 0.095g, 1-second spectral response 0.069g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Kansas City ranks 121 for seismic hazard, the 10th percentile within the state. About 516,032 people live in Kansas City, Missouri.

What a retrofit costs in Kansas City

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

More on how this number was built

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