Santa Monica's Seismic Design Category, explained

Santa Monica carries Seismic Design Category D under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. High seismic hazard - this is the category most of coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, and other active fault regions fall into. Code mandates significant seismic detailing and restricts irregular structural configurations. This is the category the Brace + Bolt scope (cripple-wall bracing, foundation bolting) is built for. That puts Santa Monica in the 98th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 98% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Santa Monica compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.824g, short-period spectral response 1.926g, 1-second spectral response 0.688g. Among 429 California cities in this dataset, Santa Monica ranks 93 for seismic hazard, the 79th percentile within the state. About 90,729 people live in Santa Monica, California.

Retrofit economics for Santa Monica

Because Santa Monica is in California, the EBB grant applies if the ZIP code participates and the house qualifies (wood-framed house on a raised (not slab-on-grade) foundation, built before 1980): a $3,000-$7,000 bracing-and-bolting job drops to $0-$4,000 after the $3,000 base grant, or effectively free for income-eligible households getting the full $10,000.

Insuring against this, not just retrofitting

Earthquake coverage in California mostly runs through the California Earthquake Authority (CEA), sold only through licensed agents at CEA-participating insurers - there is no direct-to-consumer CEA policy. A general home-insurance quote is the practical starting point for a Santa Monica homeowner asking about it.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Santa Monica's numbers. The retrofit cost and grant guide covers every EBB eligibility rule, including the ones this page can't check.