Outside the small fire station just behind Times Square on Manhattan's 8th Avenue are the photographs of 15 firefighters not seen since last week.

There is a welter of prayers and gratitude on the sidewalk. Children have sent drawings of fire engines dousing blazing skyscrapers. They have "Thank you for being brave" or "Thank you for saving our country" written on them. One depicts pin men falling down the side of the World Trade Center.

While George W. Bush keeps an expectant but nervous world waiting to see what he has planned, the Fire Department of the City of New York is already counting its dead, all killed in the line of duty.

The FDNY has been forced into mass promotions reminiscent of wartime battlefield commissions. Some 168 firefighters were promoted on Sunday, as the department rebuilt its leadership ranks, trying to close holes left by 350 not accounted for.

Public appreciation and dependence on the emergency services have been currents of this tragedy. In shop windows and on web sites are collection notices for the FDNY. K-Mart on Manhattan's Astor Place - a short ride from the financial district - is offering free refreshments to any weary officer returning from the front line.

When Major League Baseball resumed this week, some of the New York Mets wore FDNY caps. Outside fire stations are hundreds of lit candles, poems, flowers, gifts of food, drawings. Every speaker, from Rudolph Giuliani, the city's mayor, to Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs chairman, has stressed the debt owed the rescuers.

At the station on 8th Avenue - which calls itself the "Pride of Midtown" - people are stopping to read the poems. The parents of one firefighter, alive, have come just to be with the FDNY family. "The outpouring is tremendous," said the fireman's father. "They're not used to this."

Most of those who died were killed when the towers collapsed. Not long after the aircraft hit the WTC, hundreds of firefighters had turned up, trying to save the lives of tens of thousands of people in two 110-storey buildings.

Raymond Gordon retired two years ago after 30 years in the FDNY. "I knew that a lot of firefighters were not going to make it through," he said. "Their job is to save the people first. I knew there were going to be casualties."

Mr Gordon, watching the attacks on television at home on Long Island, had more knowledge than most of his former colleagues. For a year after the WTC was bombed in 1993, he was in charge of the department's high-rise unit. Mr Gordon ran an inspection force responsible for fire safety in all New York's skyscrapers.

The unit trained fire safety directors who had by law to be on duty in each building. Mr Gordon toured the WTC after the bombing, looking at safety procedures.

For all the heart-searching about the way in which the towers were evacuated last week, no one could have known in the second building that theirs was to be a victim too. Procedures also say that people on floors below a fire are usually deemed safe. They might not be ordered to evacuate a skyscraper since the mass exit is certain to impede rescue workers from helping those in or above the fire.

Mr Gordon, a third-generation firefighter, said they were very close. "A lot of times it's father to son. You go to children's weddings, christenings. It becomes a brotherhood."

Mr Gordon was down in the devastated area this week, joining the rescue and recovery. Others from the department are still there in great numbers. This became obvious when a few days ago the FDNY buried its first deputy commissioner, its chief of department and its chaplain.

Under normal circumstances, a fallen fighter would be seen off by a large turn-out, immaculate in uniform and ceremony. Instead it was large members of the public who gathered to bid farewell to Peter Ganci, the top ranking uniformed fire official, William Feehan, first deputy commissioner, and Mychal Judge, who died while administering last rites to a firefighter, his hat removed for prayer.

Though hopes are fading, the public are still praying the firefighters will find survivors. In some parts of New York, every bus shelter, every lamp-post, every spare piece of wall, is plastered with photographs of loved ones. Above each is the word "missing". And with the picture are details of height, date of birth, sometimes hair or eye colour and contact numbers.

There are candles and pieces of paper offering prayers or philosophy - "Arabs are not our enemies", "War is not the answer".

There are not many firefighters among those missing notices. Their comrades know exactly where each one is, and they are still digging them out.