Does Suamico, WI need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Suamico in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Suamico in the 7th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 7% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Suamico by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.024g, short-period spectral response 0.049g, 1-second spectral response 0.035g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, Suamico ranks 132 for seismic hazard, the 16th percentile within the state. About 13,109 people live in Suamico, Wisconsin.

What a retrofit costs in Suamico

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Wisconsin. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Earthquake insurance for a Suamico home

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 Suamico address.

More on how this number was built

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