Sahuarita's Seismic Design Category, explained

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Sahuarita is Category B. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and Sahuarita sits at the 59th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Sahuarita compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.116g, short-period spectral response 0.263g, 1-second spectral response 0.082g. Among 57 Arizona cities in this dataset, Sahuarita ranks 22 for seismic hazard, the 63th percentile within the state. About 37,448 people live in Sahuarita, Arizona.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

More on how this number was built

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