Wharton, NJ: what USGS's seismic model says

Wharton 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. That puts Wharton in the 62th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 62% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Wharton compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.15g, short-period spectral response 0.251g, 1-second spectral response 0.056g. Among 194 New Jersey cities in this dataset, Wharton ranks 127 for seismic hazard, the 35th percentile within the state. About 7,444 people live in Wharton, New Jersey.

What a retrofit costs in Wharton

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

More on how this number was built

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