I’m sure you’re right. Like you said, 1000 feet is ALOT more than people realize. I just wish the media would be required to take some classes in the difference between specifics, generalities, estimates, ballpark figures, round numbers, accuracy, order of magnitude, etc.
Words have meaning. Numbers have meaning. They should understand those basic things if they are in the communication business. At the least, they could say “I have no idea how high those flames are, but it looks like it’s over 1000 feet to me!” At least that gives the listener the sense that (a) it’s not an accurate number, and (b) “it sure is high!”
Actually they do have training in that sort of thing, and they are dictated to by the style book that the editors are responsible for seeing to it are followed. Wire copy seems to be the bottom of the barrel anymore. I’m not sure anyone even edits the wire stories as they go out. I know for a newspaper there are several levels of editing to make certain everything is kosher from a style standpoint. There’s a lot more attention paid the the details than most readers realize. Most papers even have a weekly or monthly newsroom publication that talks about errors that were allowed to slip through, or better still stories of close calls where a heads-up page designer or copy editor caught an error before it went to press.
"Zillion" may be quantitatively meaningless, but would seem applicable in some situations like this when something is so big its size is not known even within an order of magnitude.