Sunday’s winter storm — the third in a week — has again closed or delayed schools and left people scrambling for heat.

Weary line workers, some working 12-hour shifts for more than five days last week to get services restored, returned to work.

One worker trying to restore power in southern Davidson County died Sunday night when he was struck by a car.

Neal Frady, 59, of Lexington, was hit about 8:15 while standing in Old Wesley Chapel Road wearing dark clothing, the N.C. Highway Patrol reported. He was an employee of EnergyUnited, which served Davidson and several other counties, for more than 27 years.

“This is the type of thing we’ve been so worried about,” said Luanne Sherron, a spokeswoman for Union Electric, which serves Stanly County and a small part of Rowan. “We’re all one big family.”

Some companies called in help from as far away as Georgia and Kentucky, said Nelle Hotchkiss, a spokeswoman for North Carolina’s electric cooperatives.

“We don’t need any more of this,” Hotchkiss said. “This has been so difficult on employees and their families. Many of them work 16- and 18-hour shifts, then go back to dark homes just like everybody else.”

In remote areas, workers sometimes must walk a mile or more with equipment and ascend the slick, icy side of utility poles so they can wrap their strap around the rough side. Working through night and day in the worst weather imaginable, workers get wet and cold and sometimes suffer frostbite.

In Stanly County, a Union Electric worker broke a hand Sunday after falling on ice. Another fell in a pond but suffered no injuries. A dog bit a third one.

“We have to go miles and miles back into rural areas sometimes to clear trees from lines,” Sherron said. “It’s exhausting work. These guys are real heroes.”

Ice downed two transmission lines in Richfield that feed substations there.

This morning, Duke Power Co. reported 3,700 customers still without electricity in its Salisbury service area, which includes some of Stanly County. In all, some 90,000 Duke Power customers in the Carolinas lost power Sunday.

Union Electric Membership Cooperative was still restoring power to 2,500 customers this morning — a quarter of the 10,500 that lost power Sunday. “They had new crews come in from Georgia and Kentucky because basically theirs are exhausted,” Hotchkiss said.

Forecasters expected warmer, sunny weather to melt off most of the remaining ice this afternoon.

Rowan-Salisbury and Cabarrus County schools closed today. Kannapolis City and a number of private schools ran on a two-hour delay, while Catawba College and most other places ran on similar, delayed schedules.