Lakewood's Seismic Design Category, explained

Lakewood 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 Lakewood in the 48th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 48% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Lakewood by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.074g, short-period spectral response 0.138g, 1-second spectral response 0.049g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Lakewood ranks 68 for seismic hazard, the 74th percentile within the state. About 49,517 people live in Lakewood, Ohio.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Ohio. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Earthquake insurance for a Lakewood home

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 Lakewood address.

More on how this number was built

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