WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE WORD THERE?

What ever happened to the word "there"? I woke up one day and the word there disappered from the English language. What happened to it? I notice on t.v. people interviewed on the news saying......."It was a big fire and it was too many flames to run in the house to save our stuff" Or "It was a lot of water. Our car got flooded and now half our house got flooded"..... Then there's "It was a lot of people at the concert in the park. Maybe over a thousand" I'm at a loss. When did this go into effect? I didn't get the memo. I didn't hear about it on the news. I didn't read about it in the newspaper. Perhaps it went to the same place the word all right went. I don't know.
If you know what happened to it? R.S.V.P. and Thanks