“IN case of emergency, break window to escape,” bus riders in a Hubei Province city are told, but they often don’t have access to small hammers installed for breaking glass.

    Thousands of hammers have gone missing from buses this year and will be replaced with bricks, said the municipal company handling public transportation in Xiangyang, Hubei.

    The bus company said the plan to use ordinary bricks is an effort to avoid more thefts, said a Monday report in the local daily, Chutian Express.

    Xiangyang is not the only Chinese city that has had to replace emergency hammers on public buses.

    Transportation officials in Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, found 5,000 emergency hammers missing during an inspection last month. The city’s public transport contractor responded by installing alarms with the hammers, the Changjiang Daily reported.

    Cities in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Anhui Province also have reported missing hammers.

    Xiamen, in southeastern Fujian Province, said it would install explosive devices on the windows of public buses to prevent passengers from being trapped in an emergency.

    Earlier this month, 47 people died in an arson attack on a public bus in Xiamen, a picturesque coastal city. Many passengers were trapped inside the bus, and hammers to break the windows were missing.

    (SD-Agencies)