Does Lawrenceville, GA need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Lawrenceville in Seismic Design Category C: Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. Nationally, Lawrenceville ranks above 69% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 69th percentile.

Lawrenceville by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.096g, short-period spectral response 0.191g, 1-second spectral response 0.086g. Among 148 Georgia cities in this dataset, Lawrenceville ranks 74 for seismic hazard, the 50th percentile within the state. About 31,877 people live in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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