Does Lehi, UT need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Lehi in Seismic Design Category D: High seismic hazard - this is the category most of coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, and other active fault regions fall into. Code mandates significant seismic detailing and restricts irregular structural configurations. This is the category the Brace + Bolt scope (cripple-wall bracing, foundation bolting) is built for. Rank it against the rest of the country and Lehi sits at the 91th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Lehi by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.545g, short-period spectral response 1.223g, 1-second spectral response 0.445g. Among 95 Utah cities in this dataset, Lehi ranks 52 for seismic hazard, the 46th percentile within the state. About 93,446 people live in Lehi, Utah.

Retrofit economics for Lehi

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

Earthquake insurance for a Lehi 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 Lehi address.

More on how this number was built

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