Does Niagara Falls, NY need an earthquake retrofit?

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Niagara Falls is 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 Niagara Falls sits at the 53th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Niagara Falls by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.087g, short-period spectral response 0.158g, 1-second spectral response 0.044g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Niagara Falls ranks 133 for seismic hazard, the 22th percentile within the state. About 47,512 people live in Niagara Falls, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Niagara Falls

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.

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 Niagara Falls address.

More on how this number was built

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