Does New Braunfels, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places New Braunfels in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts New Braunfels in the 7th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 7% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where New Braunfels sits in Texas

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.024g, short-period spectral response 0.051g, 1-second spectral response 0.027g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, New Braunfels ranks 324 for seismic hazard, the 16th percentile within the state. About 116,477 people live in New Braunfels, Texas.

Retrofit economics for New Braunfels

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

Earthquake insurance for a New Braunfels 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 New Braunfels address.

More on how this number was built

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