Kingsford, MI: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Kingsford in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Rank it against the rest of the country and Kingsford sits at the 1th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Kingsford compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.02g, short-period spectral response 0.043g, 1-second spectral response 0.024g. Among 153 Michigan cities in this dataset, Kingsford ranks 153 for seismic hazard, the 0th percentile within the state. About 5,125 people live in Kingsford, Michigan.

Retrofit economics for Kingsford

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

More on how this number was built

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