Wasilla's Seismic Design Category, explained

Wasilla clears the point where the standard Seismic Design Category tables stop applying - USGS returns no letter here, only a flag that a site-specific study (ASCE 7-16 §11.4.8) is required. Treat that as more severe than any lettered category, not as missing data. Nationally, Wasilla ranks above 98% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 98th percentile.

How Wasilla compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.717g, short-period spectral response 1.742g, 1-second spectral response 0.913g. Among 11 Alaska cities in this dataset, Wasilla ranks 1 for seismic hazard, the 100th percentile within the state. About 10,318 people live in Wasilla, Alaska.

Retrofit economics for Wasilla

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Alaska. 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 Wasilla address.

More on how this number was built

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