Does Pleasantville, NY need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Pleasantville in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Pleasantville ranks above 64% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 64th percentile.

Pleasantville by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.179g, short-period spectral response 0.291g, 1-second spectral response 0.061g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, Pleasantville ranks 31 for seismic hazard, the 82th percentile within the state. About 7,351 people live in Pleasantville, New York.

What a retrofit costs in Pleasantville

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.

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 Pleasantville address.

More on how this number was built

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