Most of the 20-year-old satellite should simply have burntup on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but modelling work indicated perhaps 500kg could have survived to the surface.
Before people started making such a mess, the number of dust particles orbiting earth was tiny, since they would have been dragged quickly into the atmosphere by friction and burntup.
In this area, you can see the drought has left dried eucalyptus leaves and even dead ferns that just burntup as tinder and let the whole forest catch fire very quickly.