Rockdale, TX: what USGS's seismic model says

Rockdale carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Rank it against the rest of the country and Rockdale sits at the 10th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Rockdale by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.029g, short-period spectral response 0.061g, 1-second spectral response 0.038g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Rockdale ranks 280 for seismic hazard, the 27th percentile within the state. About 5,637 people live in Rockdale, Texas.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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