La Crosse's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, La Crosse is 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 La Crosse sits at the 8th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where La Crosse sits in Wisconsin

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.025g, short-period spectral response 0.051g, 1-second spectral response 0.039g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, La Crosse ranks 111 for seismic hazard, the 29th percentile within the state. About 51,049 people live in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Retrofit economics for La Crosse

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

More on how this number was built

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