Washington, DC: what USGS's seismic model says

Washington 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. Nationally, Washington ranks above 44% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 44th percentile.

Where Washington sits in District of Columbia

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.069g, short-period spectral response 0.133g, 1-second spectral response 0.043g. About 702,250 people live in Washington, District of Columbia.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for District of Columbia. 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 Washington address.

More on how this number was built

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