West Haven's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places West Haven in Seismic Design Category B: 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 West Haven sits at the 58th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

West Haven by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.112g, short-period spectral response 0.2g, 1-second spectral response 0.053g. Among 21 Connecticut cities in this dataset, West Haven ranks 12 for seismic hazard, the 45th percentile within the state. About 55,379 people live in West Haven, Connecticut.

What a retrofit costs in West Haven

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

More on how this number was built

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