Does Kennett, MO need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Kennett 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, Kennett ranks above 98% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 98th percentile.

Where Kennett sits in Missouri

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 1.147g, short-period spectral response 1.849g, 1-second spectral response 0.657g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Kennett ranks 3 for seismic hazard, the 99th percentile within the state. About 10,137 people live in Kennett, Missouri.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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 Kennett address.

More on how this number was built

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