Does Payette, ID need an earthquake retrofit?

Payette 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. That puts Payette in the 74th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 74% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Payette sits in Idaho

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.14g, short-period spectral response 0.313g, 1-second spectral response 0.113g. Among 36 Idaho cities in this dataset, Payette ranks 18 for seismic hazard, the 51th percentile within the state. About 8,754 people live in Payette, Idaho.

What a retrofit costs in Payette

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

More on how this number was built

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