Rusk's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Rusk in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Rusk in the 23th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 23% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Rusk compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.043g, short-period spectral response 0.089g, 1-second spectral response 0.054g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Rusk ranks 143 for seismic hazard, the 63th percentile within the state. About 5,553 people live in Rusk, 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.

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 Rusk address.

More on how this number was built

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