Does Lochbuie, CO need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Lochbuie in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and Lochbuie sits at the 53th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Lochbuie sits in Colorado

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.089g, short-period spectral response 0.17g, 1-second spectral response 0.052g. Among 79 Colorado cities in this dataset, Lochbuie ranks 67 for seismic hazard, the 15th percentile within the state. About 8,599 people live in Lochbuie, Colorado.

What a retrofit costs in Lochbuie

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

More on how this number was built

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