Multiple transformations of one sentence?

Question

Given a sentence A:

Despite the heavy rain, rescue workers continued to work.

Now, I was supposed to transform this sentence into another sentence, which began with Even, without changing the original sentence's meaning. So, I wrote (B):

Even during the heavy rain, rescue workers continued to work.

But, my teacher considers this wrong, saying that rescue workers working during the rainfall wasn't implied in the sentence. She says that (C):

Even though it rained heavily, rescue workers continued to work.

is correct. But, I feel that the original sentence does not imply whether rescue workers worked after or during the rain. Therefore, I feel that the both interpretations should be accepted. Thus, my question is:

1. Should both B and C be accepted?
2. Is there a third sentence also which better satisfies the criteria?

Answer 1

I can see a difference between B and C, although it depends on assuming some context not in the original. Say the workers in A worked yesterday, then it rained heavily overnight and stopped by morning, and they continued their work today. It might be noteworthy that they continued to work not because they are working in the rain, but because they are working in muddy conditions created by the now complete rain.

In this case, B would be incorrect, because it is not raining today when the workers are working again.

C retains the ambiguity in A of whether it was raining or is raining while the workers continued to work.