Wilkes-Barre, PA: what USGS's seismic model says

Wilkes-Barre 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 Wilkes-Barre sits at the 39th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How Wilkes-Barre compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.062g, short-period spectral response 0.124g, 1-second spectral response 0.044g. Among 193 Pennsylvania cities in this dataset, Wilkes-Barre ranks 90 for seismic hazard, the 54th percentile within the state. About 44,661 people live in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

What a retrofit costs in Wilkes-Barre

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

More on how this number was built

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