Does Union, KY need an earthquake retrofit?

Union 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 in the 48th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 48% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Union compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.074g, short-period spectral response 0.151g, 1-second spectral response 0.079g. Among 79 Kentucky cities in this dataset, Union ranks 63 for seismic hazard, the 21th percentile within the state. About 7,874 people live in Union, Kentucky.

Retrofit economics for Union

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

What this means for insurance

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 address.

More on how this number was built

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