Does Oneonta, NY need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Oneonta in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Oneonta in the 49th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 49% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Oneonta by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.076g, short-period spectral response 0.15g, 1-second spectral response 0.052g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Oneonta ranks 144 for seismic hazard, the 15th percentile within the state. About 15,679 people live in Oneonta, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Oneonta

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 Oneonta 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 Oneonta address.

More on how this number was built

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