Litchfield, MN: what USGS's seismic model says

Litchfield 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. Rank it against the rest of the country and Litchfield sits at the 9th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Litchfield sits in Minnesota

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.027g, short-period spectral response 0.057g, 1-second spectral response 0.022g. Among 155 Minnesota cities in this dataset, Litchfield ranks 12 for seismic hazard, the 93th percentile within the state. About 6,515 people live in Litchfield, Minnesota.

Retrofit economics for Litchfield

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

What this means for insurance

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 Litchfield address.

More on how this number was built

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