Kiryas Joel, NY: what USGS's seismic model says

Kiryas Joel carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Kiryas Joel in the 62th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 62% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Kiryas Joel compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.153g, short-period spectral response 0.255g, 1-second spectral response 0.058g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Kiryas Joel ranks 71 for seismic hazard, the 59th percentile within the state. About 43,863 people live in Kiryas Joel, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Kiryas Joel

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for New York. 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 Kiryas Joel address.

More on how this number was built

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