UPDATE: At least 50 people are likely dead following a tornado in Kentucky, governor says

[BumRushDaShow]

35. Well the EBS is deprecated and replaced with the EAS

and there is still statewide testing, but using the new system (first turned on in 1997 with the requirement that all broadcast outlets have receivers by 2012). The messages are similar but the system name is different when they run their recording.

And yeah it can be an issue in places that lack line-of-sight to some kind of broadcast signal although that is nothing new and I think about the best you can do is use AM radio, which can travel literally hundreds of miles, and hopefully have a good antenna and/or HAM capability (and an EAS alert would break into the AM radio if you can pick up any local stations).

They have recently tried to narrow the areas (using a parallelogram) where you have a Watch or Advisory or Warning or Emergency so that people who might live 50 - 100 miles away from an impactful event like a tornado, aren't getting what would be a false alert for them.