Does Pleasant Grove, AL need an earthquake retrofit?

Pleasant Grove 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 Pleasant Grove in the 77th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 77% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Pleasant Grove by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.184g, short-period spectral response 0.31g, 1-second spectral response 0.104g. Among 107 Alabama cities in this dataset, Pleasant Grove ranks 10 for seismic hazard, the 92th percentile within the state. About 9,375 people live in Pleasant Grove, Alabama.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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