Waxahachie's Seismic Design Category, explained

Waxahachie 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. Rank it against the rest of the country and Waxahachie sits at the 20th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Waxahachie by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.039g, short-period spectral response 0.083g, 1-second spectral response 0.05g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Waxahachie ranks 167 for seismic hazard, the 57th percentile within the state. About 48,617 people live in Waxahachie, Texas.

Retrofit economics for Waxahachie

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 Waxahachie 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 Waxahachie address.

More on how this number was built

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