Willard's Seismic Design Category, explained

Willard carries Seismic Design Category C under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Moderate seismic hazard. Code adds irregular-building restrictions and requires bracing of some nonstructural components (e.g. tall shelving, water heaters) in addition to structural detailing. That puts Willard in the 68th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 68% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Willard by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.084g, short-period spectral response 0.176g, 1-second spectral response 0.1g. Among 135 Missouri cities in this dataset, Willard ranks 85 for seismic hazard, the 37th percentile within the state. About 6,632 people live in Willard, Missouri.

What a retrofit costs in Willard

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

More on how this number was built

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