Depends on the design. A one tonne cube coming down from orbit will pretty much still be a whopping great lump when it hits the ground/sea. A more irregular shape will ablate more pieces away.
The satellite in question looks like this...
Assuming the wings come off (or have been remotely detached) there won't be much of them left. The central tubular section would probably come down in one piece though, or at least in a couple of pieces close together, which can have an equally damaging effect. The biggest chunk that hit the ground from the Russian meteor last year was a half a tonne. Wouldn't surprise me if it was roughly as big a lump as that. The satellite will have a fraction of the energy (because the whole meteor was much much bigger and the meteor was going much faster when it hit the atmosphere and started decelerating) but that chunk took out windows 55 miles away.
Let's do a back of a beermat calculation. Escape velocity is roughly 11Kmps at ground level. 11Kps = 11,000 m/s (obv). I'm going to assume an object coming down from orbit will be doing a tenth of that when it hits, having lost 90% of it's velocity through air resistance. Say the bit that's left weighs 300Kg, so it's lost also 2/3 of it's mass as it dropped. Total KE = 300,000*(1100*1100)= 363GJ of energy when it hits. Let's also assume the earth it hits absorbs about 90% of the energy safely, so we say 5GJ of energy 'leaks out' as an explosion. 5GJ is roughly the equivalent of just over a tonne of TNT exploding. That's going to give a lot of people a bad day if they're under it. And, frankly, I'm erring on the cautious side - the actual impact energy will probably bigger than that.
It's hard to say exactly, obviously, but two things seem fairly obvious
1) If this thing was no worry at all, they wouldn't have bothered telling anyone. Burned out satellites de-orbit regularly without anybody bothering to mention it to the press. The fact this one did get mentioned means there's some risk involved.
2) If it comes down over a populated area, the people nearby
will know about it.
The statement is correct that the risk is small but as I said that's a function of the fact that there's a very high probability of it coming down in place there are very few or no people in danger from it doing so. it doesn't mean that it's not going to be destructive to wherever it does hit.
