Muscatine's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Muscatine is Category B. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Muscatine in the 21th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 21% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Muscatine compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.041g, short-period spectral response 0.086g, 1-second spectral response 0.064g. Among 85 Iowa cities in this dataset, Muscatine ranks 10 for seismic hazard, the 89th percentile within the state. About 23,298 people live in Muscatine, Iowa.

What a retrofit costs in Muscatine

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

Earthquake insurance for a Muscatine 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 Muscatine address.

More on how this number was built

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