My Brain Turns Off When I Read Numbers

In Sunday's (today's) News Gazette, Steve Bauer has an article about fire safety here. It's National Fire Prevention Week, and I actually really liked the "Top five causes of home fires" picture explanations that surrounded the article that can be seen in the print copy of the Sunday article. There's a picture of a computer with cords even on the online edition, but on the front page of the paper there's a picture of a frying pan with chicken cooking, and it says that the number one reason of home fires is food left unattended while cooking. If it was just a list of the top five causes, I wouldn't have been as interested-- that was nice.
However, my brain really does shut off when I read numbers in the paper. Anything, really. In the third paragraph, the article says, "There were 399,000 home fires in 2007, down from 723,000 10 years earlier. Those fires in 2007 caused 13,600 injuries, 2,865 civilian deaths, and $7.4 billion in property damage." I'm assuming his is just in the United States, throughout the whole United States. Does it include Hawaii and Alaska? What's terrible is that I actually don't care if Hawaii or Alaska were included--that's probably because if they were it probably wouldn't affect my thoughts on the number. I know that home fires are down, but beyond that, I don't really know if this is a large number, really. I actually know someone, a few blocks away from my house, whose house burnt to the ground last spring--I never heard why (what a journalist I am, right?)--so I know that it can happen. I just know that I see numbers, and they just don't register.
Last night on SNL, Seth Meyers said on weekend update something about the bailout ordeal, and said something about how much money that is, and said something to the effect of 'let me try to explain that much money, I can't' because it was so so much money that it's totally unfathomable. I can image $740. I can sort of imagine $7,400. But $740,000 is too much for me to even begin to imagine $7.4 billion.
I thought the fire article was actually pretty good for just a fire prevention week article; this just goes to show that I become antsy every time I have to read numbers double digits and beyond.