Hundreds of officers and some of the nation's top bomb technicians are in Austin following every lead to uncover who is behind a string of explosions across the city.
KVUE spoke with former FBI special agent Danny Defenbaugh, who oversaw more than 100 bomb investigations in his lifetime, including the Oklahoma City bombing case.
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In Austin's situation, time is of the essence. And with multiple locations to investigate, Defenbaugh said local law enforcement agents break into groups.
So far, more than 500 agents including personnel from San Antonio and Houston have addressed more than 400 leads. Defenbaugh said those numbers have likely increased dramatically in the last 24 hours.
With hundreds of tips pouring in and calls for suspicious packages, he said agents prioritize the calls into three categories based on urgency. In order to maintain control, Defenbaugh said it's important to break down officers into teams based on locations, their skills and their experience.
Some will focus on leads, others will focus on the scene, while bomb technicians will focus on the explosives.
"Each one of those scenes will have or be led by either a bomb technician or someone who has intimate knowledge of how the reconstruction of the explosive device is being made," Defenbaugh said.
Defenbaugh said each group will report to a supervisor, which will compare notes to find similarities like they have found in this case.