By Sara Jean Green/SeattleTimes.com

Nearly 3,000 members of the Washington Army National Guard received official word today that they should begin preparing for a possible deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The 81st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, which also includes roughly 1,000 members from the California Army National Guard, received an alert order from the federal Department of Defense along with National Guard units in Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Hawaii and Oklahoma.

It’s impossible to say if and when a mobilization order could be issued, said Lt. Keith Kosik, a spokesman for this state’s Army National Guard. Now that they are on alert, citizen-soldiers need to ready themselves for a potential mission, “not just in a military sense” but in their personal lives, too, he said.

Training weekends will be planned as part of the preparation but guard members “also need to begin having conversations with family and friends to let them know [deployment] is a possibility,” Kosik said.

“It’s a very pragmatic thing to do,” he said. “We want soldiers to be focused on their mission over there and not have to worry about what’s going on at home. We want them to know their spouses and children are being taken care of while they’re gone.”

An alert order does not necessarily mean deployment, Kosik said. In 2003, the 81st Heavy Brigade Combat Team was issued an alert order that was later rescinded, he said. The brigade deployed the following year, serving in Iraq from March 2004 until March 2005.

During that deployment, five Washington state guardsmen assigned to the 81st were killed, along with two from California and one from Michigan, Kosik said. Two other guardsmen from this state who were working as contractors were also killed in Iraq.

There are currently about 350 members of the Washington Army National Guard serving in Iraq and Kuwait, Kosik said.