Does Pullman, WA need an earthquake retrofit?

Pullman 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 Pullman in the 73th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 73% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Pullman by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.132g, short-period spectral response 0.295g, 1-second spectral response 0.107g. Among 125 Washington cities in this dataset, Pullman ranks 125 for seismic hazard, the 0th percentile within the state. About 33,543 people live in Pullman, Washington.

What a retrofit costs in Pullman

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

More on how this number was built

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