Does Palatine, IL need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Palatine 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 Palatine sits at the 36th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Palatine sits in Illinois

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.059g, short-period spectral response 0.116g, 1-second spectral response 0.061g. Among 330 Illinois cities in this dataset, Palatine ranks 247 for seismic hazard, the 25th percentile within the state. About 65,951 people live in Palatine, Illinois.

What a retrofit costs in Palatine

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

Earthquake insurance for a Palatine 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 Palatine address.

More on how this number was built

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