A MUSICIAN burned out of her home during the Ealing riots has spoken of the trauma she has been through trying to get back on her feet.

Leni White, 31, fled her flat above the Ealing Green Local Supermarket with just the clothes she was wearing on August 8.

The composer and singer, whose stage name is Hazlitt fought with insurers for two months as she tried to salvage precious possessions and rebuild her life.

Recalling the night of the riots, she said: "I thought they would stay in the Ealing Broadway area. But about 9.30pm or 10pm I heard car alarms go off and a window smash.

"Then, about half an hour later, hundreds of people gathered on the green and started smashing the shop underneath to pieces. I could feel the building shaking. Then they broke into the Grove pub, coming out with bottles of alcohol and chairs to carry on attacking the shop. They put rags in the top of the bottles, lighting them and throwing them at the building. It was absolutely terrifying."

Calls to the police got no response and when Ms White saw yobs start gathering foam bricks from a skip to use as fuel for a fire she realised it was time to leave.

Fearful of being mugged and with the need to move fast, she left behind precious possessions, including her laptop with all her music and her violin.

Saying goodbye to neighbours was a poignant moment, she said: "I had no idea whether they would live. The place was about to go up in smoke."

Ms White and her fiancee who asked not to be named, slipped through the crowd and eventually made it to a hotel in Hanger Lane. After weeks of staying with family in Sommerset, friends in London and more than a month at a hotel, Ms White finally has a place to call her own again.

But it has been ordeal getting there, leading to Ms White to accuse the insurers Royal Sun Alliance and loss adjusters GAB Robins of being worse than the rioters.

She said there was no help finding accommodation, although she was led to believe there would be.

And added: "They didn't make it easy. The loss adjuster didn't seem to care it would be traumatic or dangerous for me to go back inside the flat. I was made to go through all my mouldy, smoke-damaged clothes and try to wash them, which wasn't possible, before it was agreed nothing could be salvaged.

"Writing an inventory took days and days and days and when I gave them three boxes of personal items they lost them for weeks until I called around to track them down.

"They left possessions, including my piano which was left to me by my mother, in the flat for weeks getting more damaged as they needed treating for smoke and the building has no roof.

"I had to write hundreds of emails and make many calls to get anything done. And they initially sent the interim payment to my old flat.

"Dealing with disasters must be what they do every day so why was it so had to organise things? Most of what happened I organised myself.

"It's not the way to carry out any sort of business especially when people have been through hell."

Ms White moved into her new home on October 1 but is still about £10,000 short after the insurance paid out. She says promised help in seeking compensation from the police never materialised.

Both RSA and GAB Robins said they acted professionally and promptly considering the high number of claims caused by the riots. They said they have sympathy that she was under-insured and provided advice about claiming compensation from the police.

An RSA spokesman said: "We're very sorry to hear of Miss White's concerns about the way her claim has been handled.

"We accept Miss White experienced a slight delay in receiving back some personal items and for this we apologise. We have already issued payment for the full policy value and have also agreed to pay for her personal items to be cleaned before being returned to her as a goodwill gesture.

A GAB Robins spokesman added: "We're sorry to hear that Helen White is disappointed with our work on her claim. Despite the large volume of riot claims we handled, Miss White’s claim was settled very quickly, with her insurers paying the full amount available under her policy cover.

"We have every sympathy for Miss White's position, but her case does illustrate the importance of regularly reviewing the level of home and contents insurance people have in place."