I’m not sure what story I’m thinking of. The pictures and events don’t look right, but some Wikipedia lists about disasters don’t include anything else in Texas that’s the right size.

The story I’m thinking of, the captain knew the coal was burning before he docked, and went into port anyway to try to salvage the cargo. The subsequent explosion was due to material on other boats.

I may have heard about this around the Tianjin explosion but more likely when they were fighting the new coal depots on the west coast, someone brought it up while talking about coal self igniting.