Does Temple, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Temple in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Temple ranks above 10% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 10th percentile.

Temple by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.028g, short-period spectral response 0.059g, 1-second spectral response 0.039g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Temple ranks 284 for seismic hazard, the 26th percentile within the state. About 96,267 people live in Temple, Texas.

What a retrofit costs in Temple

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

More on how this number was built

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