Does Newburyport, MA need an earthquake retrofit?

Newburyport carries Seismic Design Category C under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. Rank it against the rest of the country and Newburyport sits at the 78th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Newburyport by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.221g, short-period spectral response 0.351g, 1-second spectral response 0.076g. Among 58 Massachusetts cities in this dataset, Newburyport ranks 6 for seismic hazard, the 91th percentile within the state. About 19,163 people live in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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