Merrill's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Merrill is Category A. 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 Merrill sits at the 3th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Merrill compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.022g, short-period spectral response 0.045g, 1-second spectral response 0.032g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, Merrill ranks 147 for seismic hazard, the 6th percentile within the state. About 9,445 people live in Merrill, Wisconsin.

Retrofit economics for Merrill

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

More on how this number was built

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