Does Largo, FL need an earthquake retrofit?

Largo carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Largo in the 6th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 6% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Largo by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.023g, short-period spectral response 0.05g, 1-second spectral response 0.029g. Among 228 Florida cities in this dataset, Largo ranks 130 for seismic hazard, the 43th percentile within the state. About 82,337 people live in Largo, Florida.

What a retrofit costs in Largo

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

Earthquake insurance for a Largo 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 Largo address.

More on how this number was built

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