Puri, June 13 :    Puri, June 13:  Torrential rains pounded Puri for 24 hours since Monday night, turning the temple town into a scene from Waterworld: sheets of water everywhere with no road visible. Between Monday morning and Tuesday 10 pm, Puri received 700.7-mm rainfall, more than twice the amount Calcutta got during the September 1999 deluge. The figure, according to district emergency officer Rabindra Dash and the met office, is the highest in the past 12 years. Most streets were submerged under four feet water until this morning. While water has receded from most areas, parts of Grand Road leading to the Jagannath temple are still flooded. But the temple itself has not been affected. 'It could have been worse had the authorities not broken the protection wall of the water purification plant near the sea. The water-level could have risen by two feet,'' said an official at the district collectorate. The ferocity of the rain increased on Monday evening. Nrusingha Sarangi, a senior assistant in the district emergency office, said the rainfall began around 11 am on Monday, bringing relief to the people who had been reeling under a heat wave for the past few days. But Sarangi, like most of the town's 2 lakh residents, had no idea that a deluge was in store. 'It was unlike other days. The rain did not stop. We took a lunchbreak, but the rain gods did not. By evening, there was water in all parts of the town,' Sarangi said. All slums and low-lying areas were flooded by next morning. What added to the problem was the poor drainage system. Slums were submerged and the offices of the additional district magistrate, the district emergency office, the record room of the district collector and the reserve police lines were under four feet water. So taken aback was the administration that some officials had to stand on tables clutching their files: there was no place to keep them. The rain sent shockwaves through the peak-season tourists who apprehended a calamity of the magnitude of the October 1999 supercyclone. Around 3,000 tourists from West Bengal are now in Puri. On Tuesday evening, electricity supply was cut off following fears that the sub-stations could be submerged. Said B. Gupta, a tourist from Calcutta who was here in 1999 when the cyclone pummelled Puri and the Orissa coast: 'It was terrifying. In the absence of any concrete information we thought that the sea-water and the continuing rains would submerge the city.'' However, the situation improved today as the water started receding. Most tourists said the difficulties they faced were nothing compared to the hardships during the 1999 supercyclone.