Does Paris, KY need an earthquake retrofit?

Paris carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. 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 Paris sits at the 54th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Paris compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.093g, short-period spectral response 0.18g, 1-second spectral response 0.083g. Among 79 Kentucky cities in this dataset, Paris ranks 54 for seismic hazard, the 32th percentile within the state. About 10,185 people live in Paris, Kentucky.

Retrofit economics for Paris

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

What this means for insurance

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 Paris address.

More on how this number was built

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