lilia luciano, cbs news, uvalde, texas. >>> the uvalde county district attorney has said that she is still considering whether to bring criminal charges related to the shooting. >>> turning now to the escalating tensions in the middle east. the iranian-backed houthi rebels launched another unsuccessful missile attack on a u.s. commercial ship. the attack comes after the u.s. carried out a fifth strike on houthi military sites in yemen. a u.s. official says american forces have managed to take out enough of the houthis' air test system to enable drones to fly over for surveillance. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu is rejecting u.s. calls to scale back its offensive in gaza, and he's opposing the establishment of a palestinian state as part of a post-war scenario. netanyahu says a palestinian state would become a launching pad for attacks on israel. >>> and the idf appears to confirm reports that forces dug up graves in gaza in its mission to recover and bring the bodies of all hostages home. the military says it carries out rescue operations after receiving intelligence about

cbs's lilia luciano has the reaction tonight from uvalde. >> the law enforcement response to the massentary was a failure. >> reporter: in a devastating new report, the department of justice blames cascading failures in leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training for why police waited 77 minutes before confronting the gunman at robb elementary school in uvalde. associate attorney general vanita gupta led the investigation. >> have you seen a bigger policing failure in your career? >> the justice department had never seen anything like this. the goal of the justice department's engagement has been to learn from these lessons. >> reporter: after reviewing over 14,000 pieces of data and more than 260 interviews, the report lays much of the blame on then-school police chief pete arredondo and his failure to treat it as an active shooter situation and not send all available resources towards the threat until entry was made into the classroom. >> had the law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices, lives would have been saved, and people would have survived

>> major: pressing for more answers, lilia luciano, thank you so much. to the snow, ice, and freezing temperatures battering communities in the pacific northwest. in some parts of the upper midwest, lake effect snow is being measured in feet. cbs's carter evans reports deaths in at least 13 states are being blamed on this winter freeze. >> reporter: tonight, blinding snow and dangerous ice continue to torment vast regions of the country, making driving dangerous and even venturing outside deadly. >> throughout this period of storm, we are averaging around 900 to 1,000 calls a day. >> reporter: here in portland, a horrific loss of life caused by this arctic blast, three family members killed and a nine-month old injured after power lines fell on their suv while they were inside. neighbor daniel buck heard the boom. >> saw that the tires on the car were on fire. >> reporter: were they panicking? >> they were panicking. yeah, trying to get out of the car as fast as they could. >> reporter: he says the family escaped and that is when they were electrocuted.

lilia luciano has the details. >> reporter: failure and chaos is how a new justice department report describes the emergency response to the shooting at rob elementary school in uvalde texas. or than 300 law enforcement officials were on the scene but it took 77 minutes for them to confront and killed the gunman. >> 33 students and three of their teachers, many of whom have been shot, were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour. as law enforcement officials remained outside. >> reporter: the doj's critical incident review found responding officers inside the school should have gone into the classroom immediately to stop the 18-year-old shooter. some of the first officers on scene acted appropriately, but ones that were grazed by bullets, they retreated. that's when the scenario changed from active shooter to barricaded. >> that failure meant that law enforcement officials prioritized a protracted evacuation of students and teachers in other classrooms, instead of immediately rescuing the victims trapped with the active shooter. >> reporter: investigators place much