Editing Emergency Broadcast System (section)

==Purpose==
The system was established to provide the [[president of the United States]] with an expeditious method of communicating with the American public in the event of war, threat of war, or grave national crisis.<ref name="lifesaving">{{Citation | title=Emergency Broadcast System: The Lifesaving Public Service Program | date=March 1978 | publisher= United States Defense Civil Preparedness Agency}}</ref> It was modeled after [[Civ-Alert]], an emergency warning system in Hawaii.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.caloes.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Warning-Center/Documents/StateofCaliforniaEAS-Plan.pdf|page=27|date=October 11, 2017|title=State of California Emergency Alert System Plan|publisher=[[California Governor's Office of Emergency Services]]}}</ref> The Emergency Broadcast System replaced [[CONELRAD]] on August 5, 1963.<ref>{{Citation | title=City's Civil Defense Sirens Will Be Tested Tomorrow | newspaper=The New York Times | publication-place=New York, NY | date=October 5, 1963 | page=30 }}</ref> In later years, it was expanded for use during peacetime emergencies at the state and local levels.<ref name="lifesaving"/>

Although the system was never used for a national emergency, it was activated more than 20,000 times between 1976 and 1996 to broadcast civil emergency messages and warnings of severe weather hazards.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-11-24-mn-2446-story.html | work=Los Angeles Times | first=John | last=MacDonald | date=November 24, 1996 | title=Emergency Broadcast Test to Tone Down Its Warning | access-date=2011-01-06 | archive-date=2012-11-04 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121104165242/http://articles.latimes.com/1996-11-24/news/mn-2446_1_emergency-broadcast-test | url-status=live }}</ref>