Milton, WA: what USGS's seismic model says

Milton 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. Nationally, Milton ranks above 90% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 90th percentile.

How Milton compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.5g, short-period spectral response 1.298g, 1-second spectral response 0.446g. Among 125 Washington cities in this dataset, Milton ranks 65 for seismic hazard, the 48th percentile within the state. About 8,833 people live in Milton, Washington.

What a retrofit costs in Milton

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Washington. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Earthquake insurance for a Milton home

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 Milton address.

More on how this number was built

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