Several people who work in the Acropolis building took away computers and laptops from their offices on Monday as they started working from other places or from home.

A group of employees of a retail store of readymade garments was taking away files, computers, laptops and CPUs from their eighth-floor office on Monday. The brand’s back office, HR and accounts departments, among others, operated from the building.

“We will work from another office of our company at Tangra. We will set up the computers and laptops there. We are not sure when we will be able to come back here,” said a man who came out with a monitor.

Another employee of the company said it was difficult to climb nine floors and bring down the necessary items. Since power supply has not been restored, the elevators were not operating.

A fire broke out at Acropolis on Friday. The building has two sections — one that has the mall and another section with offices. The authorities of Acropolis said that the fire was restricted to the mall and the section from where the offices ran has remained unaffected. There were 99 offices and a pub on the terrace of this section.

Abhishek Kar, who works for a company with an office on the 13th floor, said they were working from homes. “We have instructions to work from home on Monday and Tuesday. We will be informed about what to do from Wednesday,” said Kar. The company Kar works for has their eastern region head office at Acropolis.

He added that many employees did not have laptops and were unable to access files saved on the desktops in office. The files relate to stocks and payments.

Ramendra Nath Mukherjee, who works for an advertising agency that has its office at Acropolis, said that employees were being allowed to visit the offices after signing a register on the ground floor.

“They were also allowed to take away computers and laptops,” he said.

The Acropolis authorities have written to the fire brigade seeking to reopen the section of the building that has offices and has not been affected by Friday’s fire.

A senior fire brigade officer said the section with offices has a separate power connection and the mall authorities must get it audited by an electrical inspector before the reopening.

The chief electrical inspector (of the state power department) has to first certify that the section is safe for reopening, he said. The fire brigade, too, will conduct checks before agreeing to the reopening.