Union City, NJ: what USGS's seismic model says

Union City 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 Union City in the 65th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 65% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Union City by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.18g, short-period spectral response 0.291g, 1-second spectral response 0.06g. Among 194 New Jersey cities in this dataset, Union City ranks 53 for seismic hazard, the 73th percentile within the state. About 66,918 people live in Union City, New Jersey.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for New Jersey. 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 Union City address.

More on how this number was built

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