Valley City, ND: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Valley City in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Valley City ranks above 8% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 8th percentile.

Where Valley City sits in North Dakota

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.025g, short-period spectral response 0.054g, 1-second spectral response 0.02g. Among 14 North Dakota cities in this dataset, Valley City ranks 8 for seismic hazard, the 46th percentile within the state. About 6,580 people live in Valley City, North Dakota.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for North Dakota. 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 Valley City address.

More on how this number was built

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