Thibodaux's Seismic Design Category, explained

Thibodaux carries Seismic Design Category B under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Thibodaux in the 23th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 23% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Thibodaux compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.042g, short-period spectral response 0.086g, 1-second spectral response 0.051g. Among 59 Louisiana cities in this dataset, Thibodaux ranks 35 for seismic hazard, the 41th percentile within the state. About 15,569 people live in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Thibodaux 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 Thibodaux address.

More on how this number was built

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