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Isn't it also that power decreases over the cube of the distance to the event? A truly gargantuan amount of power (1 solar mass equivalent) distributed across a 3-dimensional shell dozens or hundreds of light years across should be minuscule at any Earth-sized point along that shell.

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They put the distance at 440−190+180 Mpc. 440 megaparsecs is is around 1.2 billion light years away(!).

Wouldn't it be inverse square, not inverse cubed? Or do gravity waves behave different than other things we're used to, like light?

Actually the nice thing about gravitational waves is that we are sensitive to their amplitude, which scales as 1/r, and not to their energy, which scales as 1/r^2.

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