Does New Square, NY need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places New Square in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and New Square sits at the 65th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How New Square compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.181g, short-period spectral response 0.293g, 1-second spectral response 0.061g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, New Square ranks 23 for seismic hazard, the 87th percentile within the state. About 9,973 people live in New Square, New York.

What a retrofit costs in New Square

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

Earthquake insurance for a New Square 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 Square address.

More on how this number was built

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