Soul Crush is clearly killing the Hollows, but Plus is unaffected and note that the Captains and Espadas are over 20 km away. And from this guy's speaking, it's obvious that Reatsu was being released indiscriminately and that they weren't specifically targeting the Hollows.
And we can say this guy is a believable source, because he was clearly added to this scene specifically to explain what happened to the Hollows. I imagine there must have been people who didn't understand the scene in the manga or the anime director thought his viewers were dumb.