Does Uvalde, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

Uvalde carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Uvalde in the 3th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 3% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Uvalde sits in Texas

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.022g, short-period spectral response 0.048g, 1-second spectral response 0.018g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Uvalde ranks 357 for seismic hazard, the 7th percentile within the state. About 15,589 people live in Uvalde, Texas.

Retrofit economics for Uvalde

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.

Earthquake insurance for a Uvalde 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 Uvalde address.

More on how this number was built

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