Ty Pennigton, center, host of ABC TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, says his lines into the camera before the demolition of Kenny and Doreen Silva’s house in Warwick yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

WARWICK -- Tuesday’s trash day in the Yucatan Drive neighborhood. Yet yesterday morning, garbage trucks came; not one, two or even three of them, but four, all at once, in a caravan, horns blasting, workers hooting and spectators cheering.

“It almost brought tears to my eyes to see the garbage trucks,” said Melissa Coutcher, who works in the mayor’s office. “All these city workers were coming together for this family.”

On Monday, the Silvas were selected as the first Rhode Island family for the ABC show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, then promptly sent away for a week to Walt Disney World in Florida. While they’re gone, a small army of volunteers demolished their small, lead-paint plagued house. Then, in the wee hours of this morning, they began building them a new one, three times larger.

“I love what this show does for people,” said Barbara Allen, of Exeter, a nurse who volunteered on the project. “It changes lives.”

Kenny Silva, 35, is a garbage truck driver for the city. His wife Doreen, 33, is an at-home mother to their two biological children, 11 and 14, both autistic, their three adopted children, 2, 5 and 6, all with disabilities, and their two foster children, 6 and 19 months. They’ve been foster parents to 16 children in the last six years. But the size and condition of their house, which they couldn’t afford to address, posed a problem.

And Extreme Makeover offered a solution: 122 companies donating services and materials, and about 200 volunteers donating their time for a new Silva home. They’re offering to do whatever’s needed.

The first need was to march. That’s not normally part of demolition or construction, but apparently it makes for good TV. So a parade preceded the work.

The volunteers, in white hardhats and blue Extreme Makeover T-shirts, gathered a few hundred yards from the Silvas’ house, then, on cue, began walking and whooping their way toward it. They followed a man who acted like a conductor, repeatedly raising his arms to orchestrate enthusiasm and, finally, in front of the house, lowering them for silence.

The garbage trucks made their dramatic entrance. Then it was time for take two.

“I’m assuming that was to get different angles,” said Ann Marchetti, who works in the city’s Building Department, and notes all city workers who were there were there on their own time.

While there are many volunteers who are city workers, there are just as many who are not. Jennifer Lodge, of East Providence, is an elementary school teacher. She’s volunteering for the Silvas and for her students. There are lots of lessons here, she said, about organizing, building and inspiring. “People who don’t know each other can come together for a common cause.”

That includes Yucatan Drive neighbors. The area around the Silva house looks like an RV park with more than a dozen motor homes and tractor trailer trucks with the production company.

“Everyone in the neighborhood was in favor of this,” said Francis Corcoran, who lives directly across the street from the Silvas. “Whatever the crew needed, they got it.”

For some it means the use of a driveway or a front lawn. For Corcoran it means the use of his roof, where a video camera is capturing the 106-hour time-lapse process of the project. And on Monday, it meant his house became a childcare center for the Silva kids while their parents were being interviewed in their own home.

“There was peanut butter and jelly all over the house,” Corcoran said. “The house got a little messy, but we had fun.”

On most Sundays, Corcoran said he sees the Silva family dressed up and heading to church, the Warwick Assembly of God Church, where both Doreen and Kenny teach Sunday school. Last Sunday, Corcoran, a self-described tough guy, said he also saw the Extreme Makeover show that featured a family with a good-natured boy who couldn’t see or walk.

“It brought a tear to my eye. I said, ‘What the hell is this thing?’ ”

Never in Rita Bonoyer’s 59 years living on Yucatan Drive has she seen anything like yesterday.

“It is the event of the street. Nothing like this has ever happened.”

Alex Vilardo lives next door to the Silvas. He and his wife Katharine, who’s a couple of weeks away from delivering their first child, have essentially surrendered their property to the show. One trailer is in their driveway, and a couple of others are in their backyard, along with a large tent, which serves as the show’s carpentry shop.

“I love this,” Vilardo said. “This is not about me. It’s about Kenny. What he and his family does is great.”

Vilardo and his wife are sleeping at his parents’ house in Warwick during the week. Work on the house, which is being overseen by Oldport Homes of Portsmouth and was designed by Blount Bennett Architects of East Providence, will go around the clock through Sunday. So there will be noise and lights, which won’t affect Dora Mazzone, who lives two doors down.

“They asked if the lights would bother me. I said, ‘No. I sleep with my eyes closed.’ ”

The contributing neighbors are receiving an undisclosed stipend from the show. But they’re also receiving great generosity. The crew has parked some vehicles along Mary Murphy’s property, on which were a couple of large broken branches overhead, which a month ago she was told would cost $850 to remove.

Well, they’re gone — at no expense to Murphy.

“I thought that was OK,” Murphy said. “It was a break for me.”

Because Kenny Silva works as a garbage truck driver, the show directors thought it might be clever to incorporate garbage trucks into the show. So some debris from inside the house was tossed into one garbage truck. And then a crane was brought in to knock down the house with a wrecking ball, which happened to be another garbage truck (without its cab), one Silva first drove several years ago.

It sounds great. But it didn’t work great. The empty truck lacked density and bounced off the one-story Cape, inflicting little damage. So excavators at the site, which were used to dig a new foundation in the afternoon, tore the house down. The removal of the debris and the setting of the precast foundation were expected to be completed last night, with construction beginning shortly after midnight.

Not only has the project attracted the involvement and attention of volunteers and neighbors, but plenty of fans.

“I watch the show every week,” said Marsha Cloutier, of Warwick. “I cry.”

Cloutier was there yesterday morning. She said she’d be back last night with her husband, and most certainly again on Monday, noon to 2 p.m., when the Silvas return to see their new home. The show featuring the Silvas will air in the spring.

Anyone interested in volunteering or contributing to the project should visit www.oldporthomes.com.

brourke@projo.com