Mayor’s Column July 18, 2025
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun,
Late Wednesday morning I tuned into a Madison TV station to monitor the approaching severe storms. As the storms worked there away across the state, I felt it a good idea to head home and help keep the kids calm. As I was tracking the storm, I heard the Waupun sirens sound. When they timed out after three minutes, they sounded again when the National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning.
The early sounding of the sirens was the good work of Fire Chief BJ DeMaa. Chief DeMaa was tracking the storms in his office. He was watching radar, following storm chaser reports, monitoring a YouTube channel, and had Waupun fire personnel out in the field. The Chief noticed a hook eco on his radar, confirmed with spotters who were watching the funnel materialize, and manually sounded the city’s tornado warning sirens.
A few minutes later the National Weather Service picked up the funnel cloud and issued the tornado warning, and that’s when dispatch sounded the sirens area wide, and why ours sounded back-to-back.
Waupun was lucky, as the tornado briefly touched down but receded back to the sky before passing over Waupun. However, had the tornado remained on the ground, the quick actions of the chief by alerting the community a couple minutes earlier likely would have saved lives.
Thank you Chief DeMaa and the men and women of the Fire Department and Police Department who are out during severe weather events to help keep the community safe.
In other city news, I receive texts, emails, messages, almost daily, and many have to do with a city ordinance violation, or concern. I do want to again promote the new “Text my Gov” app available through the City of Waupun website. Text my Gov gives you the option to take a picture of your concern, write a text, and send it to city government. The system looks for keywords like (trash, parking, animal, streetlight, pothole, etc) and the complaint is passed along to the appropriate department. I’m hoping that the Text my Gov app helps streamline the process and speeds up our response time. To sign up or learn more, text “Hi” to 920.325.3205.
Thank you and God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
