Maryland Heights, MO: what USGS's seismic model says

Maryland Heights 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. That puts Maryland Heights in the 82th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 82% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Maryland Heights by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.206g, short-period spectral response 0.375g, 1-second spectral response 0.146g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Maryland Heights ranks 50 for seismic hazard, the 63th percentile within the state. About 27,671 people live in Maryland Heights, Missouri.

Retrofit economics for Maryland Heights

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

More on how this number was built

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