Marion, AR: what USGS's seismic model says

Marion carries Seismic Design Category D under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. 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 Marion sits at the 96th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Marion by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.721g, short-period spectral response 1.201g, 1-second spectral response 0.413g. Among 68 Arkansas cities in this dataset, Marion ranks 4 for seismic hazard, the 96th percentile within the state. About 13,524 people live in Marion, Arkansas.

What a retrofit costs in Marion

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

More on how this number was built

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