Tea, SD: what USGS's seismic model says

Under the seismic model IBC and ASCE 7 use for new construction, Tea is Category A. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Tea ranks above 14% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 14th percentile.

How Tea compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.046g, short-period spectral response 0.093g, 1-second spectral response 0.036g. Among 18 South Dakota cities in this dataset, Tea ranks 12 for seismic hazard, the 35th percentile within the state. About 7,699 people live in Tea, South Dakota.

What a retrofit costs in Tea

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

More on how this number was built

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