Long Beach's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Long Beach is 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 Long Beach sits at the 62th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Long Beach by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.151g, short-period spectral response 0.252g, 1-second spectral response 0.055g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Long Beach ranks 72 for seismic hazard, the 58th percentile within the state. About 34,777 people live in Long Beach, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Long Beach

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for New York. 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 Long Beach address.

More on how this number was built

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