Does Salem, IN need an earthquake retrofit?

Salem 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. Nationally, Salem ranks above 71% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 71th percentile.

How Salem compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.113g, short-period spectral response 0.222g, 1-second spectral response 0.103g. Among 126 Indiana cities in this dataset, Salem ranks 17 for seismic hazard, the 87th percentile within the state. About 6,463 people live in Salem, Indiana.

Retrofit economics for Salem

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

More on how this number was built

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