Concord, N.C. ? An armada of cherry-picker trucks lined up and moved out Friday at Lowes Motor Speedway, a staging area in the race to restore power to nearly 1.5 million people in the ice-coated Carolinas.

Repair workers who have poured in from across the South were working against the clock and the ice, which continued to send tree limbs crashing onto power lines, some of which had already been repaired once.

Frustrated utilities pushed back earlier promises and acknowledged most customers wouldn’t have power back until Wednesday night, exactly a week after a the ice storm began blowing through.

“The tree limbs are still falling and getting tangled up in our power lines,” said Mike McCracken, a spokesman for Carolina Power & Light. “We’ve made ground in some areas, but in other locations, we’ve lost ground.”

Ten thousand utility workers were working in the Carolinas, which took the brunt of the midweek storm that coated everything with a heavy glaze.

Forests and yards popped with the sound of crashing branches, roofs and cars were crushed and streets were littered with debris and downed lines.

“We come up here, work a little overtime, help the folks get the lights back on before Christmas,” said Bobby Brinkman of Sarasota, Fla.-based Pike Electric.

At least 26 deaths had been blamed on the storm since it blew across the Southern Plains earlier in the week, sending snow and ice from New Mexico to New York.